Local Quantum Physics

Local Quantum Physics

The new edition provided the opportunity of adding a new chapter entitled "Principles and Lessons of Quantum Physics". It was a tempting challenge to try to sharpen the points at issue in the long lasting debate on the Copenhagen Spirit, to assess the significance of various arguments from our present vantage point, seventy years after the advent of quantum theory, where, after ali, some problems appear in a different light. It includes a section on the assumptions leading to the specific mathematical formalism of quantum theory and a section entitled "The evolutionary picture" describing my personal conclusions. Alto gether the discussion suggests that the conventional language is too narrow and that neither the mathematical nor the conceptual structure are built for eter nity. Future theories will demand radical changes though not in the direction of a return to determinism. Essential lessons taught by Bohr will persist. This chapter is essentially self-contained. Some new material has been added in the last chapter. It concerns the char acterization of specific theories within the general frame and recent progress in quantum field theory on curved space-time manifolds. A few pages on renor malization have been added in Chapter II and some effort has been invested in the search for mistakes and unclear passages in the first edition. The central objective of the book, expressed in the title "Local Quantum Physics", is the synthesis between special relativity and quantum theory to gether with a few other principles of general nature.

Local Quantum Theory

Local Quantum Physics

Four years aga Walter Thirring suggested to me that it would be desirable to have a book describing recent results of the "algebraic approach" to quantum field theory and statistical mechanics. After long deliberations with my younger colleagues I decided to write a book but to enlarge the topic, the guiding line be ing expressed in the title "Local Quantum Physics". In essence this concerns the synthesis between special relativity and our understanding of quantum physics, together with a few other principles of a general nature. The algebraic approach, that is the characterization of the theory by a net of algebras of local observ ables, provides a concise language for this and an efficient tool for the study of the anatomy of the theory and of the relevance of various parts to qualita tive physical consequences. It is introduced in Chapter III. In compliance with the original suggestion its main results of more recent vintage are described in Chapters IV to VI. The first two chapters serve to place this material into context and make the book reasonably self contained. There is a rough tem poral order. Thus Chapter I briefly describes the pillars of the theory existing before 1950. Chapter II deals with progress in understanding and techniques in quantum field theory, achieved for the most part in the fifties and early sixties.