Relativity, Particle localizability, and Entanglement

PIRSA ID: 19110058
Event Type: Seminar
Scientific Area(s):
Quantum Foundations
End date:
Speaker(s):
  • Jason Pye

Can a relativistic quantum field theory be consistently described as a theory of localizable particles? There are many well-known obstructions to such a description. Here, we trace exactly how such obstructions arise in the regime between nonrelativistic quantum mechanics and relativistic quantum field theory. Perhaps unexpectedly, we find that in the nonrelativistic limit of QFT, there are persisting issues with the localizability of particle states. Related via the Reeh-Schlieder theorem, we also show that the fate of ground state entanglement and the Unruh effect is nontrivial in the nonrelativistic limit.