What Causes the Attraction Between Charged Particles?

[ParticleBane]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this but I wasn't quite sure where to put it.

My question is, what makes thing attract? What actually causes particles to attract to each other? I know someone is going to give me the break down of field theory here but that's not what I'm after. What I want to know is why is there charge and what exactly is it? Also, what causes something to have a charge? Why to things attract to opposite charges and not to like charges? What dictates what is charged and what isn't?

I have many more questions but I feel that this is plenty for the time being.

 

[K^2]

If you don't want a Field-Theoretical answer, you are asking in the wrong place. From perspective of Quantum Mechanics, the reason there is charge is because of the U(1) and SU(2) symmetries of the QED and QCD Lagrangian giving rise to electroweak interactions. As a consequence of that symmetry, there are certain conserved quantities, among them charge. Charge also serves as the source for electromagnetic interaction, which gives you electromagnetic attraction and repulsion via exchange of virtual photons.

Again, if that's not what you're after, you are asking it in the wrong place. Though, I doubt you'll find a more satisfactory answer.

 

[andrien]

May be you can find something useful here
http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath535/kmath535.htm

 

[Naty1]

'why things happen' and 'exactly what causes' things is usually beyond the scope of our science. We utilize mathematics to model what we observe, but there are many other
mathematical descriptions that do not seem to apply to our particular universe. Its perhaps a miracle that our man made mathematics applies to our surroundings at all.

 

[DrChinese]

My question is, what makes thing attract? What actually causes particles to attract to each other? I know someone is going to give me the break down of field theory here but that's not what I'm after. What I want to know is why is there charge and what exactly is it? Also, what causes something to have a charge? Why to things attract to opposite charges and not to like charges? What dictates what is charged and what isn't?

Welcome to PhysicsForums, ParticleBane!

Opposites charges attract, as you say. The explanation of the mechanics behind that is quite complicated, and not something that can be summarized in a short paragraph or two. The explanation of what has charge and what does not is part of what is called the "Standard Model". I think you might find that a good starting point for your reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model

 

[ParticleBane]

May be you can find something useful here
http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath535/kmath535.htm

Thank you. I did enjoy this read although it left me with many more questions that I need to read about.

Welcome to PhysicsForums, ParticleBane!

Opposites charges attract, as you say. The explanation of the mechanics behind that is quite complicated, and not something that can be summarized in a short paragraph or two. The explanation of what has charge and what does not is part of what is called the "Standard Model". I think you might find that a good starting point for your reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model

Thank you for the welcome!

What I really was looking for were some starting points. Starting points are incredibly more helpful than short explanations.

 

[Bill_K]

May be you can find something useful here
http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath535/kmath535.htm

This reference is total nonsense.

 

[K^2]

This reference is total nonsense.

Indeed. It does not represent accepted physics of interactions.

 

[derek101]

Think of it as 2 opposites,about a point of equilibrium.

 

[Naty1]

Maybe this explanation espicially Feynman's might offer insights into what we think
happens...or at least accurately explains what we observe...but it seems to me ere remains some underlying logic we haven't grasped yet...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics


I recall a discussion earlier this year about holes and electrons as charge carriers...but
just exactly what they were carrying was not discussed.

Saying negative charge is an excess of electrons and positive charge a shortage hardly seems definitive.

 

[DrDu]

It is not generally true that unlike charges attract and like charges repell. Mass is the charge with respect to gavitational interactions and two like masses clearly attract.
The point is that like charges attract if the spin of the particle exchanged is even (like the graviton which has spin 2) and repell if it is odd (like for the photon, which has spin 1).
Nevertheless there is an easy picture: Consider two persons sleeping in the same bed with an old mattrace: The vibrational excitations of the mattrace would be the particles which carry the force in the language of field theory. As each point of the mattrace can move only up or down, this field has only one degree of freedom and therefore has spin 0. Hence two like charges should attract. This is indeed the case: The relevant charge of the two people is their mass. It determines how strongly the mattrace bulges. Obviously the mass of the two people has like sign whence they attract, i.e. they roll to the center of the mattrace. You can also get repulsion: replace one of the two persons by a helium filled balloon placed below the mattrace. The balloon has effectively a negative mass and will bulge the mattrace in the opposite direction. It should be easy to imagine that the balloon and the person repell.

 

[andrien]

This reference is total nonsense.

it just does not represent accepted physics of interactions(k^2),right!

 

[K^2]

I recall a discussion earlier this year about holes and electrons as charge carriers...but
just exactly what they were carrying was not discussed.

Saying negative charge is an excess of electrons and positive charge a shortage hardly seems definitive.

That is Dirac's explanation of electron and positron as well as their charges. If you think of them as particles, such an explanation is quite satisfactory.

However, in field theory formalism, it kind of falls flat. Feynman's interpretation with particle and anti-particle propagating in opposite direction's in time works much better.

Neither of these, however, explains why there is electromagnetic interaction. Merely predicts that the sign of interaction will change depending on whether you are looking at interaction of like or opposite charges.

 

[derek101]

If an electron and positron are considered as 2 opposites about a point of equilibrium,they can head back to the point of equilibrium,but energy must be conserved,so photons can be considered as oscillations about the point of equilibrium,a photon being it's own anti-particle.
Electron/positron annihilation produces photons.

Electron in an atom dropping to lower energy level(heading towards a point of equilibrium) produces photons.

 

[Bill_K]

Are we really going to wonder what antiparticles are all over again? That was not even part of the original post. Oh well...

Saying negative charge is an excess of electrons and positive charge a shortage hardly seems definitive.

That is Dirac's explanation of electron and positron as well as their charges. If you think of them as particles, such an explanation is quite satisfactory. However, in field theory formalism, it kind of falls flat. Feynman's interpretation with particle and anti-particle propagating in opposite direction's in time works much better.

Both of these explanations are not only flat, but wrong.

Dirac Equation appears to include negative energy solutions. Dirac's Hole Theory to explain this mystery was first formulated in 1930, appearing in print in 1933. Almost immediately in 1934 it was refuted by Heisenberg and others. Only Dirac's reputation preserves it today. The obvious problems: a) the enormous charge density it requires in the vacuum state, and b) the violation of charge symmetry - are electrons the particles and positrons the antiparticles, or is it vice versa? Which is the vacuum state full of??

Feynman's interpretation is slightly better, but introduces its own problems. Sorry - nothing travels backward in time! The best you can say is, "as if". Scattering amplitudes depend continuously on the particle momenta, and one can "twist" particle lines around from future to past, and reuse one calculation to solve another problem.

The modern interpretation is that the "negative energy" solutions found in the Dirac Equation, Klein-Gordon Equation and so on are really just negative frequency solutions, and their presence is a symptom that fields must be replaced by operators. Because in quantum field theory one must specify not only the operators but also the Hilbert space on which they act.

And the correct Hilbert Space contains only positive energy states, with particles of two kinds. The negative frequency part of the field operator does not create a negative energy particle, it destroys a positive energy antiparticle. The two kinds of particle are closely related to each other, but both have positive energy and both travel forward in time.

 

[andrien]

Feynman's interpretation is slightly better, but introduces its own problems. Sorry - nothing travels backward in time! The best you can say is, "as if". Scattering amplitudes depend continuously on the particle momenta, and one can "twist" particle lines around from future to past, and reuse one calculation to solve another problem.

It is just an interpretation,right.positive energy states which will be described as positron are the absence of negative energy states,as one conceive it in hole theory.using backward in time approach is just as good as forward one,it does not violate any principle so far,if causality.

 

[K^2]

Feynman's interpretation is slightly better, but introduces its own problems. Sorry - nothing travels backward in time! [...] The modern interpretation is that the "negative energy" solutions found in the Dirac Equation, Klein-Gordon Equation and so on are really just negative frequency solutions

And the difference is? Negative frequency means proper time runs in reverse. You just switch which clock runs backwards relative to which. Changes nothing. Weak forces aside, time itself is perfectly symmetric. Backwards or forwards propagation doesn't matter. Now, the boundary conditions, on the other hand, are different. And that means we have a fixed direction for causality. But that isn't influenced in the least by which direction particles are propagating in. A particle propagating in reverse will still have forward scattering.

 

[Bill_K]

It is just an interpretation,right.positive energy states which will be described as positron are the absence of negative energy states,as one conceive it in hole theory.using backward in time approach is just as good as forward one,it does not violate any principle so far,if causality.

No, it is not just an interpretation. There is no such thing as the absence of a state. You cannot have infinity minus one electrons.

And the difference is? Negative frequency means proper time runs in reverse. You just switch which clock runs backwards relative to which. Changes nothing. Weak forces aside, time itself is perfectly symmetric. Backwards or forwards propagation doesn't matter.

The theory is time-reversal invariant, but there is one Hamiltonian operator that propagates the world forward in time, and everything must propagate in the same direction.

Now, the boundary conditions, on the other hand, are different.

You can't claim that a particle propagates backwards in time if it has forwards-in-time boundary conditions.

 

[K^2]

The theory is time-reversal invariant, but there is one Hamiltonian operator that propagates the world forward in time, and everything must propagate in the same direction.

Hamiltonian is perfectly reversible. If Hamiltonian of the universe has no inverse, we are in big trouble. The direction is still all about boundary conditions.

You can't claim that a particle propagates backwards in time if it has forwards-in-time boundary conditions.

Semantics. We are effectively arguing about phase propagation vs group propagation. I'm saying particle is traveling backwards in time if its phase propagation is reversed. You insist that it's group propagation that determines it. That's just matter of definition of what you call backwards propagation.

 

[andrien]

No, it is not just an interpretation. There is no such thing as the absence of a state. You cannot have infinity minus one electrons.

Bill,Have not you heard about dirac sea?The hole in the sea appears as positron which has positive energy compared to negative energy electron which is in the sea.it also moves forward in time.By the way, it is just an interpretation.Also have not you heard about feynman absorber theory which uses half advanced and half retarded waves?

 

[Bill_K]

Bill,Have not you heard about dirac sea?

andrien, Please reread my post above, #15, where I gave reasons why the Dirac sea is inconsistent with modern theory. Add to them the fact that the Dirac sea does not work with even spin particles (which also have antiparticles!), and that Dirac himself quickly abandoned the idea when the problems with it were pointed out.

(By the way, please don't confuse the Dirac sea in quantum field theory with the Fermi sea in solid state physics, which is perfectly valid and useful.)

Also have not you heard about feynman absorber theory which uses half advanced and half retarded waves?

Again, this was a short-lived toy theory. Note that choice of boundary conditions is irrelevant to discussion of antiparticles. It applies only to internal lines (virtual particles, propagators). These are not solutions of the free particle wave equation, and not part of the Hilbert space of states. A virtual particle can have any 4-momentum, timelike, spacelike or null, future- or past-pointing, and in fact its momentum gets integrated over when the amplitude is calculated. This does not imply that "positrons travel backwards in time," as they are not free particle states, which are the things we observe.

 

[TrickyDicky]

Bill you seem to reject the negative energy notion in the quantum physics threads with the same energy(npi) that you defend it in the relativity threads, like in "Temperature , tensors, and the unruh effect" thread.

 

[DrDu]

Explanation of attraction and repulsion of charges does not require relativistic theory and even less a discussion of the interpretation of states of negative energy.

 

[TrickyDicky]

Explanation of attraction and repulsion of charges does not require relativistic theory and even less a discussion of the interpretation of states of negative energy.

It's been clear from the start of this thread, that such explanation is not known at this point other than a phenomenologic "shut up, get the SM of particles and calculate". So don't be so fast to conclude what eventually might be required to explain it. It might be better to say that currently one doesn't find reasons to think such and such may be required to explain it.

 

[TrickyDicky]

In any case people invariably mentions negative mass or energy when explaining these things:

IYou can also get repulsion: replace one of the two persons by a helium filled balloon placed below the mattrace. The balloon has effectively a negative mass and will bulge the mattrace in the opposite direction. It should be easy to imagine that the balloon and the person repell.

 

[Bill_K]

Bill you seem to reject the negative energy notion in the quantum physics threads with the same energy(npi) that you defend it in the relativity threads, like in "Temperature , tensors, and the unruh effect" thread.

Good point. I think the "flux of negative field energy" that's invoked in Hawking radiation in order to explain how the black hole loses mass is also an inward flux of virtual particles. (Since nothing can come out, something must be going in!)

 

[K^2]

Agreed. Off-shell virtual particles carrying negative energy aren't really a problem. Problem with Dirac solutions is that they suggest long range unconfined propagation of negative energy, and that does need a special interpretation.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I know someone is going to give me the break down of field theory here but that's not what I'm after.

And what did we do?

I don't want to lock this, so please, if you are going to reply, answer the question asked.

 

[DrDu]

It's been clear from the start of this thread, that such explanation is not known at this point other than a phenomenologic "shut up, get the SM of particles and calculate". So don't be so fast to conclude what eventually might be required to explain it. It might be better to say that currently one doesn't find reasons to think such and such may be required to explain it.

As I tried to lay out, I believe that attraction/ repulsion can be intuitively understood in field theory and certainly do not require a "shut up and calculate" type approach.
My explanation with the "mattress" is based on the introduction of fields in Zee's book "Quantum field theory in a nutshell".
IMHO the point is that attraction/ repulsion is a basic phenomenon in all kinds of field theory, including non-relativistic settings like in solid state theory.
E.g., the phonon assisted attraction of electrons in superconductivity is often depicted by balls rolling on a rubber surface.
So trying to derive it from the SM as you suggest rather hides the underlying physics.
I admit that negative mass is somewhat artificial in my example. In fact I am not sure whether there are examples in particle physics of negative charges coupling to fundamental fields of even spin.

 

[ParticleBane]

And what did we do?

I don't want to lock this, so please, if you are going to reply, answer the question asked.

I believe I left out a word. I meant to say basic field theory. I wasn't looking for an answer out of a freshman physics book. Something more in depth.

 

[DrDu]

Btw, we had a very similar thread:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=401974