Wednesday 3 January 2018

antimatter - Are antiparticles just particle-shaped holes?


If particles are simply regions of space where certain quantum fields have non-zero divergence, are anti-particles simply the corresponding regions of opposite divergence?


This seems like the intuitive answer, especially when considering the process of annihilation. I have heard before that anti-particles are analogous to particles moving through time in reverse, which seems to indicate that an annihilation event is just a point of symmetry in that (arguably, single) particle's history. This analogy breaks down, however, when it comes to gravitation, since there seems to be no evidence of a negative-mass particle.


So what then is the meaning of an anti-particle, when their symmetry is preserved across certain fields, but not other?




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