Bundle Theoretic Descriptions of Massless Single-Particle State Spaces; How do we perceive a moving quantum particle

TL;DR

This paper develops a bundle theoretic framework for massless particles, like photons and gravitons, revealing how gauge conditions and freedoms naturally emerge from an observer’s perception of their quantum states.

Contribution

It extends the bundle theoretic description to massless particles, connecting gauge freedoms with observer perceptions of internal quantum states.

Findings

Gauge conditions arise from observer perceptions of quantum states.

Massless particles exhibit gauge freedom except those with spin-0 and 1/2.

Framework applies to photons and gravitons, linking field equations to quantum state perception.

Abstract

Recently, a bundle theoretic description of massive single-particle state spaces, which is better suited for Relativistic Quantum Information Theory than the ordinary Hilbert space description, has been suggested. However, the mathematical framework presented in that work does not apply to massless particles. It is because, unlike massive particles, massless particles cannot assume the zero momentum state and hence the mass shell associated with massless particles has non-trivial cohomology. To overcome this difficulty, this paper suggests a new framework that can be applied to massless particles. Applications to the cases of massless particles with spin-1 and 2, namely photon and graviton, will reveal that the field equations, the gauge conditions, and the gauge freedoms of Electromagnetism and General Relativity naturally arise as manifestations of an inertial observer's perception of the internal quantum states of a photon and a graviton, respectively. Finally, we show that gauge freedom is exhibited by all massless particles, except those with spin-0 and 1/2.