What Persists in Neutrino Oscillation? Trajectory-States and the Ontological Surplus of Particle Language in QFT Quantum field theory is routinely interpreted through the language of particles, even though its formalism is built from fields, amplitudes, excitations, and transition structures. This paper asks whether that vocabulary should be treated as literal ontology or as operational shorthand. It argues that, while particle language remains pragmatically indispensable, it may encode more ontological confidence than either QFT or detector practice strictly warrants. To sharpen this issue, the paper introduces Active Memory Engineering (AME) as an interpretive framework based on two operations: reconstruction and trajectory tracking through state change. On this view, what is physically continuous across a process is not primarily a microscopic object with fixed intrinsic identity, but a phase-evolving, reconstruction-dependent trajectory-state shaped by propagation history, coupling, and detection context. Neutrino oscillation provides the decisive case study. Rather than supporting naive object persistence, oscillation theory and experimental practice suggest a stronger picture of continuity through transformation. The paper concludes that particle language should be retained as an effective descriptive instrument, but not automatically elevated into a fundamental ontology.
What Persists in Neutrino Oscillation? Trajectory-States and the Ontological Surplus of Particle Language in QFT Quantum field theory is routinely interpreted through the language of particles, even though its formalism is built from fields, amplitudes, excitations, and transition structures. This paper asks whether that vocabulary should be treated as literal ontology or as operational shorthand. It argues that, while particle language remains pragmatically indispensable, it may encode more ontological confidence than either QFT or detector practice strictly warrants. To sharpen this issue, the paper introduces Active Memory Engineering (AME) as an interpretive framework based on two operations: reconstruction and trajectory tracking through state change. On this view, what is physically continuous across a process is not primarily a microscopic object with fixed intrinsic identity, but a phase-evolving, reconstruction-dependent trajectory-state shaped by propagation history, coupling, and detection context. Neutrino oscillation provides the decisive case study. Rather than supporting naive object persistence, oscillation theory and experimental practice suggest a stronger picture of continuity through transformation. The paper concludes that particle language should be retained as an effective descriptive instrument, but not automatically elevated into a fundamental ontology.
Modern physics has achieved remarkable success by describing reality in terms of particles, states, and information bits. Yet recent developments in quantum matter, unconventional superconductivity, and topological computation increasingly suggest that a purely particle-centric framework may not be the most natural organizing description, but rather a convenient approximation. This work proposes an ontological reframing—from It from Bit to It from Wave—in which physical reality is understood as persistent, collective wave processes characterized by phase continuity, nonlocal coherence, and history-bearing relations. Within this framework, quasiparticles—including magnons, phonons, plasmons, and anyons—are reinterpreted not as entities, but as stable collective excitation modes: enduring patterns of interacting waves sustained by a medium. Building on this shift, localization is reinterpreted as the breakdown of wave connectivity, while delocalization corresponds to the restoration of global phase coherence. Superconductivity is reformulated not as a special property of paired particles, but as a phase-continuous, delocalized regime in which dissipation is not eliminated but reorganized into collective phase dynamics—naturally suggesting disorder-tolerant and non-BCS-like superconducting behavior. Extending the same ontology to computation, we argue that quantum computation is fundamentally history-based rather than state-based. Information is encoded not primarily in localized bits or qubits, but in the topological and phase-coherent histories of wave evolution, where robustness arises from nonlocal distribution rather than active error suppression. Crucially, this framework motivates previously under-emphasized physical observables—such as phase continuity length, history coherence time, degree of nonlocality, and dissipation-reorganized coherence—as primary descriptors of relational persistence. Rather than introducing new equations, this work reorganizes interpretation across domains and specifies concrete experimental and theoretical directions by asking which wave relations persist, under what constraints, and for how long. This paper constitutes the ontological foundation of the “It from Wave” research program. A complementary interpretive study examines the historical and conceptual shift from particle transport to phase propagation in electrical conduction, while a minimal physical model demonstrates how information and conduction can arise from phase-coupled dynamics without particle motion. Together, these works articulate a unified framework in which phase relations, history, and nonlocal coherence are treated as physically primary. This paper forms part of a conceptual trilogy exploring the transition from a Machine OS to a Life OS through an It from Wave perspective. The trilogy consists of:(i) a foundational conceptual work reframing information, existence, and generation beyond the It from Bit paradigm;(ii) a minimal theoretical study addressing nonlinear generative time, resonance, and feedback dynamics; and(iii) an applied interpretation engaging recent cosmological observations, including extreme intracluster heating in the early universe. While each paper is self-contained, together they articulate a unified framework in which reality is understood as a resonant, generative process rather than a sequential, machine-like assembly.
We show that the Bohmian approach in terms of persisting particles that move on continuous trajectories following a deterministic law can be literally applied to quantum field theory. By means of the Dirac sea model—exemplified in the electron sector of the standard model neglecting radiation—we explain how starting from persisting particles, one is led to standard QFT employing creation and annihilation operators when tracking the dynamics with respect to a reference state, the so-called vacuum. Since on the level of wave functions, both formalisms are mathematically equivalent, this proposal provides for an ontology of QFT that includes a dynamics of individual processes, solves the measurement problem, and explains the appearance of creation and annihilation events. 1. Bohmian Mechanics from Quantum Mechanics to Quantum Field Theory2. The Dirac Sea Model3. Equilibrium States and the Vacuum4. Excitations of the Vacuum and the Fock Space Formalism5. The Appearance of Particle Creations and Annihilations6. The Merits of the Bohmian Approach
We show that the Bohmian approach in terms of persisting particles that move on continuous trajectories following a deterministic law can be literally applied to QFT. By means of the Dirac sea model -- exemplified in the electron sector of the standard model neglecting radiation -- we explain how starting from persisting particles, one is led to standard QFT employing creation and annihilation operators when tracking the dynamics with respect to a reference state, the so-called vacuum. Since on the level of wave functions, both formalisms are mathematically equivalent, this proposal provides for an ontology of QFT that includes a dynamics of individual processes, solves the measurement problem and explains the appearance of creation and annihilation events.
We analyze the problem of neutrino oscillations via a fermionic particle detector model inspired by the physics of the Fermi theory of weak interactions. The model naturally leads to a description of emission and absorption of neutrinos in terms of localized two-level systems. By explicitly including source and detector as part of the dynamics, the formalism is shown to recover the standard results for neutrino oscillations without mention to ``flavor states,'' which are ill defined in quantum field theory. This illustrates how particle detector models provide a powerful theoretical tool to approach the measurement issue in quantum field theory and emphasizes that the notion of flavor states, although sometimes useful, must not play any crucial role in neutrino phenomenology.
We consider a quantum field theory (QFT) model of neutrino oscillations in vacuum that attempts to take into account that the neutrino source particle and the neutrino detection particle both interact with their respective environments by collisions. Our model is minimal in a twofold sense. Firstly we simply assume that neutrino production and detection take place in between collisions in time intervals Δt and τ, respectively. Secondly, we only introduce the two wave packets that are absolutely necessary which are those of the neutrino source and the neutrino detection particle. Within this model we find that, for all practical purposes, there are no decoherence effects in the neutrino oscillation amplitude and oscillations occur in space not in time. Moreover, our model leads to the correct time correlation between neutrino production and detection and to a factorization of the event rate of the compound neutrino production--detection process into decay rate, oscillation probability and detection cross section.
This preprint presents a field-first interpretation of wave-particle duality grounded in the ontology of Quantum Field Theory (QFT). The framework treats quantum fields as the fundamental ontology of physical reality, while particles are understood as excitation states of their respective fields. Wave-like phenomena, including interference, diffraction, tunneling, and coherence effects, are interpreted as arising from the propagation and interaction dynamics of these excitations rather than from an independent wave ontology. The central thesis is that wave-particle duality does not represent two distinct physical realities, but rather different observational regimes of a single field-based process. Localized interactions appear particle-like, while propagation and interference phenomena appear wave-like. This interpretation is fully consistent with the existing mathematical formalism of Quantum Field Theory and does not introduce new physical laws or modifications to established quantum mechanics. The purpose of this work is interpretive and conceptual. It aims to provide a clearer ontological framework for understanding the relationship between quantum fields, particles, and wave-like behavior while reducing the conceptual ambiguity traditionally associated with wave-particle duality. This document represents the initial preprint release of the field-first interpretation framework.