A Characterisation of Locality in Momentum Space

Abstract

It is proved that a Poincare invariant Wightman function which fulfils the spectral property and can be defined at sharp times is local if and only if the integration over both the energy variables of a commutator in momentum space is a polynomial in the momentum conjugated to the spacial difference variable of the commutator with distributional coefficients depending on the remaining energy and momentum variables. Using this characterisation of locality in momentum space, the locality of a sequence of Wightman functions with nontrivial scattering behaviour (associated to some quantum field in indefinite metric) can be proved by explicit calculations. We compare the above characterisation of locality with the classical integral representation method of Jost, Lehmann and Dyson.