Local Observables in Quantum Field Theory

Quantum field theory (QFT) is the foundation for our current understanding of almost everything in nature except gravity. QFT builds on the general principles of quantum theory (article 03431) by adding the concept of a local observable – an observable associated with a bounded region of spacetime. This article introduces some of the general principles of QFT, expressed in terms of local observables.

Download PDF (26 pages, 526 KB)

Revision history

2024-12-14 (updated bibliography)
2024-06-23 (removed an unnecessary assertion about the meaning of gauge symmetry)
2024-03-04 (updated publication info for one reference)
2023-11-12 (made project euclid url shorter, replaced Hamiltonian with hamiltonian)
2023-10-26 (added a few new references)
2023-04-17 (fixed a typo in the bibliography)
2023-02-10 (added a cross-reference to a new article)
2022-10-23 (updated bibliography to include publication data instead of only arxiv link)
2022-06-11 (updated references to other articles in this series to link to html abstract pages instead of to pdfs. Didn't change the version number/date)
2022-04-30 (removed a broken cross-reference, clarified one sentence, rearranged one paragraph)
2022-04-30 (first version)

www.cphysics.org

updated 2024-12-14

Clear Physics

Local Observables in Quantum Field Theory

Revision history