Quantum Physics, Relativity, and Complex Spacetime: Towards a New Synthesis

Abstract

The positivity of the energy in relativistic quantum mechanics implies that wave functions can be continued analytically to the forward tube T in complex spacetime. For Klein-Gordon particles, we interpret T as an extended (8D) classical phase space containing all 6D classical phase spaces as symplectic submanifolds. The evaluation maps $e_z: f\to f(z)$ of wave functions on T are relativistic coherent states reducing to the Gaussian coherent states in the nonrelativistic limit. It is known that no covariant probability interpretation exists for Klein-Gordon particles in real spacetime because the time component of the conserved "probability current" can attain negative values even for positive-energy solutions. We show that this problem is solved very naturally in complex spacetime, where $|f(x-iy)|^2$ is interpreted as a probability density on all 6D phase spaces in T which, when integrated over the "momentum" variables y, gives a conserved spacetime probability current whose time component is a positive regularization of the usual one. Similar results are obtained for Dirac particles, where the evaluation maps $e_z$ are spinor-valued relativistic coherent states. For free quantized Klein-Gordon and Dirac fields, the above formalism extends to n-particle/antiparticle coherent states whose scalar products are Wightman functions. The 2-point function plays the role of a reproducing kernel for the one-particle and antiparticle subspaces.