✎ CPT Theorem [The Physics Travel Guide]

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====== CPT Theorem ======

<note tip>
Explanations in this section should contain no formulas, but instead, colloquial things like you would hear them during a coffee break or at a cocktail party.
</note>
  
<tabbox Concrete>

The CPT theorem says that any Lorentz invariant local [[theories:quantum_theory:quantum_field_theory|quantum field theory]] with a Hermitian Hamiltonian must be CPT symmetric.

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<blockquote>A story has it that in the early sixties, Feynman was asked to give an evening
talk to physics students at Caltech, explaining the basic idea of the CPT
theorem: the celebrated result in quantum field theory that states that any
relativistic (i.e. Lorentz-invariant) quantum field theory must be invariant
under CPT, the composition of charge conjugation, parity reversal and time
reversal. Feynman agreed to commit to doing this, commenting that if one cannot explain something to second year Caltech undergraduates then one
does not understand it. The story goes that Feynman spent a month or two
trying to plan the talk, and then, in despair, cancelled the commitment.<cite>[[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3122/ede46d94feb43353ecea2a6416e15d296ccf.pdf|Towards a geometrical understanding of the CPT theorem]] by Hilary Greaves</cite></blockquote>
 
<tabbox Abstract> 
  * The standard reference is "PCT, spin and statistics, and all that" by R. F. Streater and A. S. Wightman.
  * For a nice discussion of the symmetry groups involved see [[https://arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0012006|The Pin Groups in Physics: C, P, and T]] by M. Berg, C. DeWitt-Morette, S. Gwo, E. Kramer

The CPT theorem tells us that CPT symmetry holds for all physical phenomena.
<tabbox Research>

* For the experimental status of CPT symmetry see the [[https://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0287|Data Tables for Lorentz and CPT Violation]] by Alan Kostelecky, Neil Russell

-->Why, exactly, is the CPT theorem considered so holy?#

<blockquote>Because the CPT theorem is an almost-consequence of Lorentz invariance.

If you have a Lorentz invariant theory, then you can change the coordinates of space time with the following matrix and leave the theory the same

An interesting property of quantum mechanics is that the amplitudes you calculate are analytic functions of the variables in the problem, this is an obvious fact in perturbation theory, where the amplitudes are just rational functions of the momenta coming in and going out, but its more general than that. The amplitudes are analytic in a wide range of circumstances.

And this means that the theory is invariant for any complex value of y, by the principle of analytic continuation. In particular, for
y=−1=i 
and if you stick in y=i, you get that the matrix above does a PT transformation. So that a theory of a bunch of scalar particles is PT invariant.

A more general result, if you allow charged particles, is that a general theory is CPT invariant; the argument is essentially the same.<cite>[[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/spin_stat.html|Ron Maimon]]</cite></blockquote>
<--

</tabbox>

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