meopemuk said:
It would all need to be re-done with 4-momentum integrals, and
4-positions, using \delta^{(4)}(k^2 - m^2)
Why? Obeying the Poincare invariance (which is the true mathematical expression of
the principle of relativity) does not require you to perform all calculations in a
4-dimensional notation. A theory is relativistically invariant if and only if it has a
representation of the Poincare group of inertial transformations. In most cases the
3D notation is entirely appropriate for relativistic theories and their comparison
with experiment. The 4D notation is often (e.g., in this case) redundant and confusing.
Construct a (single-particle) vector space of states indexed by all the possible tuples
of 4-momentum. At this point we don't yet have a Hilbert space because we haven't
specified an inner product. It also does not yet carry a Poincare representation, and
hence doesn't represent the states of a physical particle type.
Now consider a spin-0 particle type of mass m. To turn the 4-momentum vector space into
a (single-particle) Hilbert space for this type of particle, we restrict to the subset consisting
of 4-momentum vectors which satisfy the usual relativistic mass formula. That's done via
multiplying by the familiar \delta^{(4)}(k^2 - m^2) expression. Now (and only
now) we can turn our (restricted) vector space into a Hilbert space by specifying the inner
products between all states such that we only mention the 3-momentum:
<k'|k> = ... \delta^{(3)}(k'-k), (and taking the completion, which I won't worry
about here).
But now, if we try to change from momentum basis to coordinate basis, extra care is
needed. If we start from the original 4-vector momentum space (non-Hilbert) we
can do the usual Fourier transformations and pass to a 4-vector coordinate space (like
Minkowski space), but this is not a Hilbert space of states. To get a Hilbert space
in a coordinate basis, we must start from the Hilbert space in momentum basis,
with the restriction \delta^{(4)}(k^2 - m^2), and then do the Fourier-transform
stuff. Multiplication by \delta^{(4)}(k^2 - m^2) in momentum space
corresponds to convolution with F_x(\delta^{(4)}(k^2 - m^2)) in coordinate space,
where F_x denotes Fourier transform k\to x, hence the allowable
4-vectors from the full 4D coordinate space are restricted to those which are obtained
via this complicated convolution. Only those states are in our Hilbert space, so talking
about position states indexed by arbitrary 4-position coordinates is incorrect in
general, because they might not be in the Hilbert space of the relativistic particle.
So 3D notation is reasonably ok in momentum basis, because the relativistic constraint
is easy to keep in mind (and it's easy enough to convert a 4D integral containing a
\delta^{(4)}(k^2 - m^2) into a 3D integral containing a 1/E_k).
The same cannot be said for the coordinate basis.