New Concepts in Particle Physics from Solution of an Old Problem

TL;DR

This paper introduces a modular localization framework in quantum physics that links on- and off-shell quantities, crossing symmetry, and thermal phenomena, offering new insights into particle physics and quantum field theory.

Contribution

It presents a nonperturbative modular approach that unifies localization, crossing symmetry, and thermal aspects in quantum field theory, extending to bootstrap models and holographic relations.

Findings

Established a connection between crossing symmetry and thermal properties like Hawking-Unruh effects.

Provided a spacetime interpretation for the Zamolodchikov-Faddeev algebra.

Developed a decomposition theory of QFTs into chiral conformal theories.

Abstract

Recent ideas on modular localization in local quantum physics are used to clarify the relation between on- and off-shell quantities in particle physics; in particular the relation between on-shell crossing symmetry and off-shell Einstein causality. Among the collateral results of this new nonperturbative approach are profound relations between crossing symmetry of particle physics and Hawking-Unruh like thermal aspects (KMS property, entropy attached to horizons) of quantum matter behind causal horizons, aspects which hitherto were exclusively related with Killing horizons in curved spacetime rather than with localization aspects in Minkowski space particle physics. The scope of this modular framework is amazingly wide and ranges from providing a conceptual basis for the d=1+1 bootstrap-formfactor program for factorizable d=1+1 models to a decomposition theory of QFT's in terms of a finite collection of unitarily equivalent chiral conformal theories placed a specified relative position within a common Hilbert space (in d=1+1 a holographic relation and in higher dimensions more like a scanning). The new framework gives a spacetime interpretation to the Zamolodchikov-Faddeev algebra and explains its thermal aspects.