Ranku
- 433
- 18
Are the typical energies of virtual particles lower than real particles?
That question makes no sense.Ranku said:Are the typical energies of virtual particles lower than real particles?
Let me re-frame it then: are the masses of virtual particles comparable to real particles?PeroK said:That question makes no sense.
Search for "virtual particles mass shell".Ranku said:Let me re-frame it then: are the masses of virtual particles comparable to real particles?
If by "mass" you mean the appropriate factor in the Lagrangian, then yes. (Though even here there are complications, since the Lagrangian has to be the "bare" Lagrangian, not the renormalized one.)Ranku said:are the masses of virtual particles comparable to real particles?
I mean mass in the sense of magnitude. Since virtual particles can become real upon addition of energy, how big is the gap in energy?PeterDonis said:If by "mass" you mean the appropriate factor in the Lagrangian, then yes. (Though even here there are complications, since the Lagrangian has to be the "bare" Lagrangian, not the renormalized one.)
If you mean something else by "mass", the question probably is not well-defined.
Where do you get this from?Ranku said:[...]Since virtual particles can become real upon addition of energy, [...]
"Magnitude" is much too vague. Magnitude of what?Ranku said:I mean mass in the sense of magnitude.
This is not a valid way of thinking about how virtual particles work.Ranku said:Since virtual particles can become real upon addition of energy, how big is the gap in energy?
dextercioby said:Where do you get this from?
PeterDonis said:This is not a valid way of thinking about how virtual particles work.
Click on the numbers (1. and 2.), they're hyperlinks.vanhees71 said:Can you give the reference?
Neutron decay uses ~80x heavier W boson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_neutron_decayRanku said:Are the typical energies of virtual particles lower than real particles?
vanhees71 said:In paper 2 they use "polaritons", i.e., an in-medium (!) collective state to emit real photons. That's also not something "popping out of the vacuum" but just an in-medium photon-production process. As Einstein said (about theoretical physicists but it seems to apply nowadays as well to experimentalists): "Don't listen to their words but look at their deeds."
They are not directly visible but their effects are. A freely propagating particle is not virtual.vanhees71 said:These seem to be quite strange papers. Can you give the reference? One has to now the context to judge whether the statements make some sense when translated to more careful formulations.
"Virtual particles" are not observable physical objects but abstractions in the perturbative evaluation of S-matrix elements for scattering processes. Depicted by Feynman diagrams they are symbolized by internal lines and stand for propagators of (free) fields. As such virtual particles don't have physical properties, because they are never observables.
Please review PF's series of Insights articles on virtual particles, in particular this one:Prishon said:They are not directly visible but their effects are.