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arXiv:quant-ph/0511136 · Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics

On the explanation for quantum statistics

Simon W. Saunders

Published Jan 11, 2006• 50 citations
arXivHTMLPDF
DOI
10.1016/j.shpsb.2005.11.002

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Chapter 5 addresses the question, “What explains CPT invariance and the spin–statistics connection (SSC)?” It first considers why we should care about explaining CPT invariance and the SSC. It then argues that the CPT and spin–statistics theorems cannot be said to provide the sought after explanations. It offers instead an explanation of the SSC in interacting non-relativistic theories. This explanation explains by virtue of a derivation from non-fundamental principles in non-interacting relativistic quantum field theories (RQFTs), and an explication of intertheoretic relations between interacting RQFTs, non-interacting RQFTs, and interacting non-relativistic theories. The chapter ends by arguing that the presence of both the SSC and CPT invariance in realistic interacting RQFTs cannot be explained by even this type of explanation, and that currently, the existence problem precludes a full understanding of these properties in realistic interacting RQFTs.
A common way of characterizing Boltzmann’s explanation of thermodynamics in term of statistical mechanics is with reference to three ingredients: the dynamics, the past hypothesis, and the statistical postulate. In this paper I focus on the statistical postulate, and I have three aims. First, I wish to argue that regarding the statistical postulate as a probability postulate may be too strong: a postulate about typicality would be enough. Second, I wish to show that there is no need to postulate anything, for the typicality postulate can be suitably derived from the dynamics. Finally, I discuss how the attempts to give preference to certain stochastic quantum theories (such as the spontaneous collapse theory) over deterministic alternatives on the basis that they do not need the statistical postulate fail.
This book seeks to answer the question "What explains CPT invariance and the spin-statistics connection?" These properties play foundational roles in relativistic quantum field theories (RQFTs), are supported by high-precision experiments, and figure into explanations of a wide range of phenomena, from antimatter, to the periodic table of the elements, to superconductors and superfluids. They can be derived in RQFTs by means of the famous CPT and Spin-Statistics theorems; but, the author argues, these theorems cannot be said to explain these properties, at least under standard philosophical accounts of scientific explanation. This is because there are multiple, in some cases incompatible, ways of deriving these theorems, and, secondly, because the theorems fail for the types of theories that underwrite the empirical evidence: non-relativistic quantum theories, and realistic interacting RQFTs. The goal of this book is to work towards an understanding of CPT invariance and the spin-statistics connection by first providing an analysis of the necessary and sufficient conditions for these properties, and second by advocating a particular account of explanation appropriate for this context.