Lagrangian quantum theory

John R. Ray

A Lagrangian that yields equations of motion for a damped simple harmonic oscillator is shown not to describe this system, but a completely different physical system. Thus, we have a simple counterexample to the statement: ’’If a Lagrangian gives the correct equations of motion for a given system then the Lagrangian describes the system.’’ We also construct a physical system that the Lagrangian describes and derive some of its properties. The quantum theory based on the above Lagrangian has been used to attempt to discuss the quantum theory of dissipation. This is, however, incorrect since the system the Lagrangian describes has no dissipation.

P. A. M. Dirac

C. Vargas‐Hernández

David Wallace

I analyse the conceptual and mathematical foundations of Lagrangian quantum field theory (that is, the "naive" quantum field theory used in mainstream physics, as opposed to algebraic quantum field theory). The objective is to see whether Lagrangian quantum field theory has a sufficiently firm conceptual and mathematical basis to be a legitimate object of foundational study, or whether it is too ill-defined. The analysis covers renormalisation and infinities, inequivalent representations, and the concept of localised states; the conclusion is that Lagrangian QFT (at least as described here) is a perfectly respectable physical theory, albeit somewhat different in certain respects from most of those studied in foundational work.

K. B. Wharton

Despite the importance of the path integral, there have been relatively few attempts to look to the Lagrangian for a more realistic framework that might underlie quantum theory. While such realism is not available for the standard path integral or quantum field theory, a promising alternative is to only consider field histories for which the Lagrangian density is always zero. With this change, it appears possible to replace amplitudes with equally-weighted probabilities. This paper demonstrates a proof-of-principle for this approach, using a toy Lagrangian that corresponds to an arbitrary spin state. In this restricted framework one can derive both the Born rule and its limits of applicability. The fact that the Lagrangian obeys future boundary constraints also results in the first continuous, spacetime-based, hidden-variable description of a Bell-inequality-violating system.