Abstract
Effective Field Theory (EFT) is the successful paradigm underlying modern theoretical physics, including the “Core Theory” of the Standard Model of particle physics plus Einstein’s general relativity. I will argue that EFT grants us a unique insight: each EFT model comes with a built-in specification of its domain of applicability. Hence, once a model is tested within some domain (of energies and interaction strengths), we can be confident that it will continue to be accurate within that domain. Currently, the Core Theory has been tested in regimes that include all of the energy scales relevant to the physics of everyday life (biology, chemistry, technology, etc.). Therefore, we have reason to be confident that the laws of physics underlying the phenomena of everyday life are completely known.
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Notes
- 1.
One subtlety is that the electron-X interaction could be enhanced if the two particles exchanged a large number of virtual Y s; something similar happens in ordinary electromagnetism. But that would require the Y itself to be a very light particle, and then it would contribute the number of effective neutrino species bounded by LEP.
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Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to thank Jenann Ismael, Ira Rothstein, Charles Sebens, and Mark Wise, as well as an anonymous referee, for helpful comments on a draft version of this manuscript. This research is funded in part by the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at Caltech, by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, under Award Number DE-SC0011632, and by the Foundational Questions Institute.
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Carroll, S.M. (2022). The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes. In: Ioannidis, S., Vishne, G., Hemmo, M., Shenker, O. (eds) Levels of Reality in Science and Philosophy. Jerusalem Studies in Philosophy and History of Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99425-9_3
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