Why is it interesting?

It is well known that people working at the frontiers of physics often don't know what they are talking about. This statement has at least two meanings. First, the experimental evidence available may be incomplete or ambiguous and confusing. Second, the theoretical concepts employed may not have received a precise formulation. In this talk, I will give arguments for the position that it can be useful to refine a theoretical framework to the point at which it is a mathematically precise and consistent scheme, even if, as is sometimes the case, the resulting conceptual frame has physical deficiencies. I will offer several examples to illustrate the point. Of course, it is only occasionally that this sort of enterprise can help in the hunt for the Green Lion, the ultimate Lagrangian of the world.

The usefulness of a general theory of quantized fields by A. S. WIGHTMAN

It was one of the surprises of the 1950s that two of the most prized general results of Lagrangian quantum field theory (also distinguished by being well verified experimentally), the CPT Theorem and the Connection of Spin With Statistics, turned out to be theorems of the general theory of quantized fields with only the above- mentioned hypotheses. The proofs were easy consequences of a characterization of the theories in terms of vacuum expectation values.

The usefulness of a general theory of quantized fields by A. S. WIGHTMAN

Layman

Student

Researcher

Common Question 1

Common Question 2

Examples

Example1

Example2:

History