Local Quantum Physics: Fields, Particles, Algebras

The new edition provided the opportunity of adding a new chapter entitled Principles and Lessons of Quantum Physics It was a tempting challenge to try to sharpen the points at issue in the long lasting debate on the Copenhagen Spirit to assess the significance of various arguments from our present vantage point seventy years after the advent of quantum theory where after ali some problems appear in a different light It includes a section on the assumptions leading to the specific mathematical formalism of quantum theory and a section entitled The evolutionary picture describing my personal conclusions Alto gether the discussion suggests that the conventional language is too narrow and that neither the mathematical nor the conceptual structure are built for eter nity Future theories will demand radical changes though not in the direction of a return to determinism Essential lessons taught by Bohr will persist This chapter is essentially self contained Some new material has been added in the last chapter It concerns the char acterization of specific theories within the general frame and recent progress in quantum field theory on curved space time manifolds A few pages on renor malization have been added in Chapter II and some effort has been invested in the search for mistakes and unclear passages in the first edition The central objective of the book expressed in the title Local Quantum Physics is the synthesis between special relativity and quantum theory to gether with a few other principles of general nature This book gives a comprehensive account of local quantum physics understood as the synthesis of quantum theory with the principle of locality Centered on the algebraic approach it describes both the physical concepts and the mathematical structures and their consequences These include the emergence of the particle picture general collision theory covering the cases of massless particles and infraparticles the analysis of possib