Comments on the 2016 Award of APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research

2016 ◽  
pp. 4054-4057 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Y. Lo

The 2016 APS (American Physical Society) Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research awarded to E. Witten for discoveries in the mathematical structure of quantum field theory, is indeed exceptional because there is no experimental support. This would be a big step backward from Galileo's experimental-based tradition. Moreover, the Selection Committee of APS was unaware that Witten does not understand general relativity and actually has made mathematical and physical mistakes that leads to the errors on general relativity in the press release of the 1993 Nobel Committee for Physics. However, an unexpected benefit of this award is that it leads to the exposition on the shortcomings in mathematics and physics of APS.

An investigation is started into a possible mathematical structure of the Wheeler-DeWitt superspace quantization of general relativity. The emphasis is placed throughout on quantum field theory aspects of the problem and topics discussed include canonical commutation relations in a triad basis, the status of the constraint equation and the rôle played by perturbation theory.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Oldofredi ◽  
Hans Christian Öttinger

AbstractMany attempts have been made to provide Quantum Field Theory with conceptually clear and mathematically rigorous foundations; remarkable examples are the Bohmian and the algebraic perspectives respectively. In this essay we introduce the dissipative approach to QFT, a new alternative formulation of the theory explaining the phenomena of particle creation and annihilation starting from nonequilibrium thermodynamics. It is shown that DQFT presents a rigorous mathematical structure, and a clear particle ontology, taking the best from the mentioned perspectives. Finally, after the discussion of its principal implications and consequences, we compare it with the main Bohmian QFTs implementing a particle ontology.


In this contribution, my purpose is to study a new mathematical instrument introduced by me in 1958-9: the tensor and spinor propagators. These propagators are extensions of the scalar propagator of Jordan-Pauli which plays an important part in quantum-field theory. It is possible to construct, with these propagators, commutators and anticommutators for the various free fields, in the framework of general relativity theory (see Lichnerowicz 1959 a, b, c , 1960, 1961 a, b, c ; and for an independent introduction of propagators DeWitt & Brehme 1960).


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