High Energy Particle Physics

Non-Unitary Evolution in High Energy Physics: a Brief Overview

Authors: Ervin Goldfain
Comments: recovered from sciprint.org

Unitarity and locality are fundamental postulates of Quantum Field Theory (QFT). By construction, QFT is a replica of equilibrium thermodynamics, where evolution settles down to a steady state after all transients have vanished. Events unfolding in the TeV sector of particle physics are prone to slide outside equilibrium under the combined action of new fields and un-suppressed quantum corrections. In this region, the likely occurrence of critical behavior and the approach to scale invariance blur the distinction between "locality" and 2non-locality". We argue that a correct description of this far-from-equilibrium setting cannot be done outside nonlinear dynamics and complexity theory.
Category: High Energy Particle Physics