Relativistic probability densities for location
Abstract
Imposing the Born rule as a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics would require the existence of normalizable wave functions also for relativistic particles. Indeed, the Fourier transforms of normalized k-space amplitudes yield normalized x-space wave packets which reproduce the standard k-space expectation values for energy and momentum from local momentum pseudo-densities. However, in the case of bosonic fields, the wave packets are nonlocally related to the corresponding relativistic quantum fields, and therefore the canonical local energy-momentum densities differ from the pseudo-densities and appear nonlocal in terms of the wave packets. We examine the relation between the canonical energy density, the canonical charge density, the energy pseudo-density, and the Born density for the massless free Klein-Gordon field. We find that those four proxies for particle location are tantalizingly close even in this extremely relativistic case: In spite of their nonlocal mathematical relations, they are mutually local in the sense that their maxima do not deviate beyond a common position uncertainty . Indeed, they are practically indistinguishable in cases where we would expect a normalized quantum state to produce particle-like position signals, viz. if we are observing quanta with momenta . We also translate our results to massless Dirac fields. Our results confirm and illustrate that the normalized energy density provides a suitable measure for positions of bosons, whereas normalized charge density provides a suitable measure for fermions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2304.08540,
title = {Relativistic probability densities for location},
author = {Joshua G. Fenwick and Rainer Dick},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.08540},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
34 pages, 23 figures. Please see paper for full abstract with LaTeX symbols included