Related papers: Are All Particles Real?
We address the question whether Bohmian trajectories exist for all times. Bohmian trajectories are solutions of an ordinary differential equation involving a wavefunction obeying either the Schroedinger or the Dirac equation. Some…
Following the spirit of de Broglie and Einstein, we think the concepts of matter and radiation can be unified. We know a particle propagates like a wave; its motion is described by certain wave equations. At this point, it is not clear what…
Pilot wave theory endows particles with definite positions at all times governed by deterministic dynamics. However, individual particle trajectories are generically undetectable by experiment. This idea might seem to be contested in light…
We discuss a new realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics based on discontinuous motion of particles. The historical and logical basis of discontinuous motion of particles is given. It proves that if there exists only one kind of…
The use of Bohmian mechanics as a practical tool for modeling non-relativistic quantum phenomena of matter provides clear evidence of its success, not only as a way to interpret the foundations of quantum mechanics, but also as a…
The idea that particles are the basic constituents of all matter dates back to ancient times and formed the basis of physical thought well into modern times. The debate about whether light was a wave or a stream of particles also lasted…
Motivated by a revision of the classical equations of electromagnetism that allow for the inclusion of solitary waves in the solution space, the material collected in these notes examines the consequences of adopting the modified model in…
Is the wave function a physical reality traveling through our apparatus? Is it a real wave, or it is only a mathematical tool for calculating probabilities of results of measurements? Different interpretations of the quantum mechanics (QM)…
Well over a century after the discovery of the electron, we are still faced with serious conceptual issues regarding precisely what an electron is. Since the development of particle physics and the Standard Model, we have accumulated a…
A novel two-tiered organization of the microworld is presented, in which only the fundamental quantum fields of the standard model of particle physics (electrons, photons, quarks, etc.) are true quantum waves, exhibiting linear…
According to classical physics particles are basic building blocks of the world. Classical particles are distinguishable objects, individuated by physical characteristics. By contrast, in quantum mechanics the standard view is that…
We show that the particle motion in Bohmian mechanics, given by the solution of an ordinary differential equation, exists globally: For a large class of potentials the singularities of the velocity field and infinity will not be reached in…
In classical mechanics matter and fields are completely separated. Matter interacts with fields. For particle physicists this is not the case. Both matter and fields are represented by particles. Fundamental interactions are mediated by…
This paper is a set of musings on what particles really are -- something one all too often as a particle physicist assumes is pretty well-established. The initial motivation for these thoughts comes from a question that I always ask Alberto…
The Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics adds particle trajectories to the wave function and ensures that the probability distribution of the particle positions agrees with quantum mechanics at any time. This is not sufficient to…
We may call "alien particles" those particles belonging to the matter/field content of a $d$-dimensional brane other than the $3$-brane (or stack of branes) sweeping the space-time in which we live. They can appear in our space-time at the…
Theoretical developments related to the gravitational interaction have questioned the notion of particle in quantum field theory (QFT). For instance, uniquely-defined particle states do not exist in general, in QFT on a curved spacetime.…
In order to arrive at Bohmian mechanics from standard nonrelativistic quantum mechanics one need do almost nothing! One need only complete the usual quantum description in what is really the most obvious way: by simply including the…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
Normally, in mathematics and physics, only point particle systems, which are either finite or countable, are studied. We introduce new formal mathematical object called regular continuum system of point particles (with continuum number of…