SMuK 2021 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 3: Quantum Theory 2

AGPhil 3.2: Talk

Tuesday, August 31, 2021, 14:30–15:00, H5

Persistence and Nonpersistence as Complementary Models of Identical Quantum Particles — •Philip Goyal — University at Albany (SUNY), Albany, NY

In our ordinary conception of the physical world, it is tacitly assumed that the appearances perceived in the present moment are underpinned by objects that persist through time, and that are reidentifiable on the basis of their stable characteristic properties.

It is widely accepted that the quantum treatment of assemblies of identical particles brings this assumption into question, but no consensus on a modification of this assumption has thus far emerged.

In this talk, we propose a new understanding of identical particles based on a recent derivation of the symmetrization postulate [1].

We adopt an operational approach in which the raw data consists of identical localized events. We construct two distinct models of the event data, namely a persistence model and a nonpersistence model. These differ in whether or not it is assumed that successive events are generated by individual persistent entities ('particles'). We then show that these models can each be described within the Feynman formulation of quantum theory and be synthesized to derive Feynman's form of the symmetrization postulate.

On this basis, we propose that the quantal behaviour of identical particles reflects a complementarity of persistence and nonpersistence, analogous to the way in which the behavior of an individual electron reflects a complementarity of particle and wave.

[1] P. Goyal, New J. Phys. 17, 013043 (2015)