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Laws, symmetries and reality

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Acta Physica Hungarica A) Heavy Ion Physics

Abstract

It is argued that quantum mechanics follows naturally from the assumptions that there are no fundamental causal laws but only probabilities for physical processes that are constrained by symmetries, and reality is relational in the sense that an object is real only in relation to another object that it is interacting with. The first assumption makes it natural to include in the action for a gauge theory all terms that are allowed by the symmetries, enabling cancellation of infinities, with only the terms in the standard model observable at the energies at which we presently do our experiments. In this approach, it is also natural to have an infinite number of fundamental interactions.

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Correspondence to Jeeva Anandan.

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This paper is based on the invited talk given by the author at the Wigner Centennial Conference, Pécs, Hungary, 8–12 July, 2002.

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Anandan, J. Laws, symmetries and reality. Acta Phys. Hung. A 19, 389–401 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1556/APH.19.2004.3-4.42

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