Observations on Unstable Quantons, Hyperplane Dependence and Quantum Fields

Abstract

There is persistent heterodoxy in the physics literature concerning the proper treatment of those quantons that are unstable against spontaneous decay. Following a brief litany of this heterodoxy, I develop some of the consequences of assuming that such quantons can exist, undecayed and isolated, at definite times and that their treatment can be carried out within a standard quantum theoretic state space. This assumption requires hyperplane dependence for the unstable quanton states and leads to clarification of some recent results concerning deviations from relativistic time dilation of decay lifetimes. In the course of the discussion I make some observations on the relationship of unstable quantons to quantum fields.

29 pages, 4 figures, revised with added references, section 4 revised

References in corpus (7)

• General boundary quantum field theory: Foundations and probability interpretation
• Time Asymmetric Quantum Theory - II. Relativistic Resonances from S-Matrix Poles
• The Unstable System in Relativistic Quantum Mechanics
• Evolution in Time of Moving Unstable Systems
• Violations of Einstein's time dilation formula in particle decays
• Calculation of the Scattering Amplitude for Resonance Production using Relativistic Gamow Vectors
• Unstable particle production near threshold with effective theory methods

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Shirokov's contracting lifetimes and the interpretation of velocity eigenstates for unstable quantons