The Negative Energy Sea
History and Philosophy of Physics
2024-03-19 v1 Quantum Physics
Abstract
The Dirac negative energy sea introduced the concept of antimatter, and explained it, not least in its relationship to negative-energy solutions to the wave equation. Post-war, it was largely displaced by what I shall call the 'standard formalism', dependent, among other things, on normal-ordering. A much better explanation is provided by the 'two complex structures' viewpoint, as first introduced by Irving Segal: the one ('natural') kind of complex numbers at the level of covariant, local fields; and the other ('particle') complex numbers at the level of the one-particle Hilbert space and Fock space. The former is local, the latter non-local: therein lies the fundamental difference between relativistic and non-relativistic quantum theory.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2403.11225,
title = {The Negative Energy Sea},
author = {Simon Saunders},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.11225},
year = {2024}
}