5/16/2023 0 Comments Virtual particles![]() Many physicists think that the concept of virtual particles should be avoided entirely, because it is misleading and confusing, to the general public and also to physics students. ![]() ![]() The same can be said, for example, for the fields of quantum field theory themselves: do they actually exists or are they merely a mathematical tool? No one knows, and no one cares, as long as quantum field theory provides accurate results and its predictions agree with experiment better than those of other theories. But since we cannot observe them and know whether they actually exist, the question of their existence is only of interest to philosophers, not to physicists.ĭo artifacts of mathematical calculations actually exist in reality? This question cannot be answered using our current scientific knowledge, so physicists don't bother with it, they only care that these mathematical calculations give results that agree with experiment. So if they existed, all infinite possibilities must exist as once (in a quantum superposition). If you don't use perturbation theory, then you don't need virtual particles at all.Īlso, as I said, for each interaction there are infinite possibilities for virtual particles on the internal line. Virtual particles have no other role other than in Feynman diagram calculations, and in principle they have no existence outside of the mathematical framework of perturbation theory. We don't know what happens in between, and we approximate this using Feynman diagrams and the concept of virtual particles. To summarize: we only see the particles coming in and out of the diagram. ![]()
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