...the concept of fields as mediators of particle interactions turns out to be philosophically
unsatisfying and physically problematic, as it leads, in particular, to problematic
self-interactions. Against this background, I will argue that the true significance of
fields is that of “book-keeping variables”...
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The concept of particle indistinguishability thus construed faces some obvious challenges. It remains controversial,
now for more than a century, whether classical particles can be treated as indistinguishable; or if they can,
whether the puzzles raised by Gibbs are thereby solved or alleviated; and if so, how the differences between
quantum and classical statistics are to be explained.
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It is generally accepted that any accelerated charge in Minkowski space
radiates energy. It is also accepted that a stationary charge in a static
gravitational field (such as a Schwarzschild field) does not radiate energy.
It would seem that these two facts imply that some forms of Einstein’s
Equivalence Principle do not apply to charged particles.
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We consider an elementary collision model of a molecular reservoir upon which an external field is applied and the work is dissipated into heat. To realize macroscopic irreversibility at the microscopic level, we introduce a “graceful” irreversible map which
randomly mixes the identities of the molecules. This map is expected to generate informatic entropy exactly equal to the independently calculable irreversible thermodynamic
entropy.
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This paper introduces an exact correspondence between a general class of stochastic systems and quantum theory. This correspondence provides a new framework for using Hilbertspace methods to formulate highly generic, non-Markovian types of stochastic dynamics, with
potential applications throughout the sciences.
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