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Can the energy of a particle be negative in the absence of external fields?

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Abstract

We study the question of conditions for the existence of negative-energy states of particles in the absence of external fields in inertial and noninertial frames of reference. We show that in the nonrelativistic case in noninertial reference frames, there always exist domains where the energy of particles is negative. We also show that in the relativistic case, the existence of negative-energy states of point particles does not lead to violations of the energy dominance condition. We consider conditions for the appearance of negative and zero energies of particles in the Milne universe and Rindler space–time.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the participants of the MQFT-2022 conference for the discussion of the talk, and D. I. Kazakov for formulating the question that underlies the title of the paper.

Funding

The work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant No. 22-22-00112).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    A. A. Grib

  2. Friedmann Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, St. Petersburg, Russia

    A. A. Grib

  3. Institute for Problems of Mechanical Engineering, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Yu. V. Pavlov

  4. Lobachevskii Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics, Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia

    Yu. V. Pavlov

Authors
  1. A. A. Grib
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  2. Yu. V. Pavlov
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Correspondence to Yu. V. Pavlov.

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Additional information

Translated from Teoreticheskaya i Matematicheskaya Fizika, 2023, Vol. 216, pp. 504–518 https://doi.org/10.4213/tmf10453.

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Grib, A.A., Pavlov, Y.V. Can the energy of a particle be negative in the absence of external fields?. Theor Math Phys 216, 1337–1348 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0040577923090088

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0040577923090088

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