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I’m Not There. Or: Was the Virtual Particle Ever Born?

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Biographies in the History of Physics

Abstract

The virtual particle is an integral part of the conceptual framework of modern quantum electrodynamics (QED) and quantum field theory (QFT). Although these particles are in principle unobservable and, according to a popular narrative, violate energy conservation for the short time of their existence, their centrality in the conceptual framework is unquestionable.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “[…] so muß man noch ihre gegenseitige Energie in Betracht ziehen, wobei die Differenz \( {\text{h}}\upnu_{\text{no}} - {\text{h}}\upnu \) auf Kosten dieser gegenseitigen Energie zu kompensieren ist”.

  2. 2.

    “[…] beide besprochenen Prozesse ebenso wie der Ramaneffekt verhalten [sich so], als ob zwei Vorgänge, von denen jeder nicht dem Energiesatz genügt, in einem Akt geschehen”.

  3. 3.

    “[das] Zusammenwirken zweier Lichtquanten in einem Elementarakt”.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the research unit “The Epistemology of the LHC”, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under the grant number FOR 2063. I want to thank the members of the Research-Unit for reading a preprint of this paper. Especially, I want to thank the members of the subproject A1 “The Formation and Development of the Concept of the Virtual Particles”, Robert Harlander, Daniel Mitchel, Friedrich Steinle, and Adrian Wüthrich, for valuable input concerning the structure and content of the paper and for help with the language. I also want to thank Simon Rebohm for pointing me to the paper on object biographies by Hans Peter Hahn and, last but not least, the organizers of the workshop for making this publication possible and the participants for input on the presentation of a preliminary version of this paper.

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  1. Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Markus Ehberger

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  1. Markus Ehberger
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Correspondence to Markus Ehberger .

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  1. Ernst-Haeckel-Haus, Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena, Germany

    Christian Forstner

  2. Union College, Schenectady, NY, USA

    Mark Walker

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Ehberger, M. (2020). I’m Not There. Or: Was the Virtual Particle Ever Born?. In: Forstner, C., Walker, M. (eds) Biographies in the History of Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48509-2_15

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