Towards a Probabilistic Foundation of Relativistic Quantum Theory: The One-Body Born Rule in Curved Spacetime

TL;DR

This paper develops a probabilistic framework for relativistic quantum theory in curved spacetime, generalizing the Born rule without relying on Minkowski spacetime symmetries, and addresses foundational issues like the problem of time.

Contribution

It introduces a novel relativistic Born rule approach that is compatible with general relativity and extends the Lagrangian formulation to curved spacetime, overcoming previous limitations.

Findings

Formulated a general relativistic continuity equation for particle probabilities.

Replaced hypersurface spacelike condition with a transversality condition.

Developed a Lagrangian picture addressing the problem of time.

Abstract

In this work we establish a novel approach to the foundations of relativistic quantum theory, which is based on generalizing the quantum-mechanical Born rule for determining particle position probabilities to curved spacetime. A principal motivator for this research has been to overcome internal mathematical problems of quantum field theory (QFT) such as the `problem of infinities' (renormalization), which axiomatic approaches to QFT have shown to be not only of mathematical but also of conceptual nature. The approach presented here is probabilistic by construction, can accommodate a wide array of dynamical models, does not rely on the symmetries of Minkowski spacetime, and respects the general principle of relativity. In the analytical part of this work we consider the $1$-body case under the assumption of smoothness of the mathematical quantities involved. This is identified as a special case of the theory of the general-relativistic continuity equation. While related approaches to the relativistic generalization of the Born rule assume the hypersurfaces of interest to be spacelike and the spacetime to be globally hyperbolic, we employ prior contributions by C. Eckart and J. Ehlers to show that the former condition is naturally replaced by a transversality condition and that the latter one is obsolete. We discuss two distinct formulations of the $1$-body case, which, borrowing terminology from the non-relativistic analog, we term the Lagrangian and Eulerian pictures. We provide a comprehensive treatment of both. The main contribution of this work to the mathematical physics literature is the development of the Lagrangian picture. The Langrangian picture shows how one can address the `problem of time' in this approach and therefore serves as a blueprint for the generalization to many bodies and the case that the number of bodies is not conserved (example given for the latter).