Re: How real are the "Virtual" partticles?

From: Arnold Neumaier (Arnold.Neumaier_at_univie.ac.at)
Date: 03/29/05 

Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 17:16:29 +0000 (UTC)

jsolomon@mail.com wrote:

> Eugene Stefanovich wrote:
>
>>Let me then summarize the main points of our discussion
>
> I would like to share my thoughts on your approach. You apply a
> unitary transformation to the "old" Hamiltonian to obtain a "new"
> Hamiltonian. Therefore your approach is mathematically equivalent to
> the old approach. The potential in your approach is that you are
> looking at the problem from a different "point of view".
>
> Some problems become more clear when the "point of view" is changed.
> For example it makes more sense to describe the laws of planetary
> motion from the "point of view" of being at the center of the solar
> system. Of course we could transform our coordinate system to the
> surface of the earth and describe the motion of the planets from that
> "point of view". However in that case the laws of planetary motion
> would be extremely complicated. Although both "points of view" are
> mathematically equivalent we can see that having the correct "point of
> view" is very important in gaining insight into a problem.
>
> Now when your Hamiltonian is used the vacuum state and single particle
> states are very simple. Your vacuum is almost the same as what we use
> to imagine when we thought of a vacuum, i.e., nothing is there. Your
> single particle states are also very uncomplicated. Therefore changing
> the from the "old" Hamiltonian to the "new" Hamiltonian simplifies that
> part of the discussion. However the question remains as to what is
> most fundumental. At this point, you have to start with the old
> Hamiltonian to get anywhere. That is, you can write out the free
> non-interacting part of the Hamiltonian easily enough but you cannot
> write out the intaction terms. To get these you have to go back to the
> original Hamiltonian where the interaction terms are known and apply
> your methods to obtain the new Hamiltonian. Therefore it seems that
> the original Hamiltonian is more fundamental because we always have to
> start with it.

This is a good description of the scope and value of Stefanovich's
approach. (Although he argues against it in another mail; he simply
does not understand tradition well enough to see what is really
going on.)

The fatal thing is that he claims much more, which only serves to
discredit the good he did.

> What you really want to do is derive your Hamiltonian from basic
> principles and not start with the old Hamiltonian. So I would like to
> know have you made any progress on this? What approaches have you
> tried?

Here he never claimed anything new.

Arnold Neumaier

Relevant Pages

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