Particles, particle labels, and quanta: The toll of unacknowledged metaphysics
- Cambridge Univ. (United Kingdom)
- Univ. of California, Davis (United States)
The practice of describing multiparticle quantum systems in terms of labeled particles indicates that the authors think of quantum entities as individuatable. The labels, together with particle indistinguishability, create the need for symmetrization or antisymmetrization (or, in principle, higher-order symmetries), which in turn results in surplus formal structure' in the formalism, formal structure which corresponds to nothing in the real world. The authors argue that these facts show quanta to be unindividuatable entities, things in principle incapable of supporting labels, and so things which support no factual difference if two of them are thought of as being switched. When thinking of the metaphysics of quanta, one should eschew the misleading labels of the tensor product Hilbert space formalism and prefer the ontologically more faithful description of the Fock space formalism. This conception eliminates puzzles about the quantum statistics of bosons.
- OSTI ID:
- 7278284
- Journal Information:
- Foundations of Physics; (United States), Vol. 21:1; ISSN 0015-9018
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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