What is electric charge?: Charge as a local observable in relativistic quantum field theory

Abstract

It is rather surprising that modern quantum physics does not appear to have provided any clear answer to the simple question ``what is electric charge?''. Even when the total charge operator $Q$ is well-defined, the non-locality of $Q$ implies that it is not an observable in the usual sense, which can be measured by a (local) experimental apparatus. A candidate for the ``local version'' of charge operator is the 4-current operator $j=(j^μ)_{μ=0,1,2,3}$. However, it is known that the rigorous definition of $j$ is difficult in $(3+1)$-dimensional Minkowski space. Although it was found that the current can be defined in $(1+1)$-dimensions (Carey et al.), I argue that even when $j$ can be suitably defined, the interpretability of $j$ as the ``local charge operator'' is dubious. Instead I return to Araki and Wyss (1964), and propose the concept of ``scope-local charge'' $Q_ζ(P)$ for a ``scope'' $P$, expressed by a finite-dimensional projection. I work in an abstract $C^{*}$-algebraic setting.