English

How Haag-tied is QFT, really?

History and Philosophy of Physics 2024-09-17 v4 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Haag's theorem cries out for explanation and critical assessment: it sounds the alarm that something is (perhaps) not right in one of the standard way of constructing interacting fields to be used in generating predictions for scattering experiments. Viewpoints as to the precise nature of the problem, the appropriate solution, and subsequently-called-for developments in areas of physics, mathematics, and philosophy differ widely. In this paper, we develop and deploy a conceptual framework for critically assessing these disparate responses to Haag's theorem. Doing so reveals the driving force of more general questions as to the nature and purpose of foundational work in physics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.06977,
  title  = {How Haag-tied is QFT, really?},
  author = {Chris Mitsch and Marian Gilton and David Freeborn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.06977},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

53 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T07:33:30.046Z