CPT Invariance and the Spin-Statistics Connection
Jonathan Bain
Abstract
This book seeks to answer the question “What explains CPT invariance and the spin–statistics connection (SSC)?” These properties play foundational roles in relativistic quantum field theories (RQFTs), are supported by high-precision experiments, and figure into explanations of a wide range of phenomena, from antimatter, to the periodic table of the elements, to superconductors and superfluids. They can be derived in RQFTs by means of the famous CPT and spin–statistics theorems; but these theorems cannot be said to explain these properties, at least under standard philosophical accounts of scie ... More
This book seeks to answer the question “What explains CPT invariance and the spin–statistics connection (SSC)?” These properties play foundational roles in relativistic quantum field theories (RQFTs), are supported by high-precision experiments, and figure into explanations of a wide range of phenomena, from antimatter, to the periodic table of the elements, to superconductors and superfluids. They can be derived in RQFTs by means of the famous CPT and spin–statistics theorems; but these theorems cannot be said to explain these properties, at least under standard philosophical accounts of scientific explanation. This is because there are multiple, in some cases incompatible, ways of deriving these theorems, and, secondly, because the theorems fail for the types of theories that underwrite the empirical evidence: non-relativistic quantum theories, and realistic interacting RQFTs. The goal of this book is to work toward an understanding of CPT invariance and the SSC by first providing an analysis of the necessary and sufficient conditions for these properties, and second by advocating a particular account of explanation appropriate for this context. Under this account, the explanatory work is done in part by an appeal to intertheoretic relations, and in part by means of a derivation, within a more fundamental theory, of a property expressed in a less fundamental theory.
Keywords:
CPT theorem,
spin–statistics theorem,
philosophy of quantum field theory,
scientific explanation
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198728801 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198728801.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Jonathan Bain, author
Associate Professor, Department of Technology, Culture and Society, Polytechnic School of Engineering, New York University
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