In quantum physics, the configuration space is the fundamental thing, and you get the appearance of an individual particle when the amplitude distribution factorizes...
Um, if individual particles are derived from the amplitude distribution on the configuration space, and the dimension of that space is related to the number of those particles, how do we then know how many dimensions should a particular configuration space have?
Concretely, how did we know that we have to draw a 2-d diagram (+2 dimensions for the amplitudes) up there? One spatial dimension for each photon? Ok, but supposedly we don’t know how many photons are there—actually, individual photons don’t even exist fundamentaly—since this should be a derived fact from the amplitude distribution, right? Do we just guess and see which picture comes out as the most natural?
It all seems kind of circular… in a confused corner of my mind at least—help, please? :-/
A full diagram in that style would be 1 dimension of graph for each dimension of space for each particle that happens to exist, and you have a separate diagram for each different combination of different numbers of particles.
Obviously, he’s simplified it, so the answer to your question is just, “That’s how he chose to reduce it”.
Um, if individual particles are derived from the amplitude distribution on the configuration space, and the dimension of that space is related to the number of those particles, how do we then know how many dimensions should a particular configuration space have?
Concretely, how did we know that we have to draw a 2-d diagram (+2 dimensions for the amplitudes) up there? One spatial dimension for each photon? Ok, but supposedly we don’t know how many photons are there—actually, individual photons don’t even exist fundamentaly—since this should be a derived fact from the amplitude distribution, right? Do we just guess and see which picture comes out as the most natural?
It all seems kind of circular… in a confused corner of my mind at least—help, please? :-/
A full diagram in that style would be 1 dimension of graph for each dimension of space for each particle that happens to exist, and you have a separate diagram for each different combination of different numbers of particles.
Obviously, he’s simplified it, so the answer to your question is just, “That’s how he chose to reduce it”.