Causal fermion system

The theory of causal fermion systems is an approach to describe fundamental physics. It gives quantum mechanics, general relativity and quantum field theory as limiting cases and is therefore a candidate for a unified physical theory.

Instead of introducing physical objects on a preexisting space-time manifold, the general concept is to derive space-time as well as all the objects therein as secondary objects from the structures of an underlying causal fermion system. This concept also makes it possible to generalize notions of differential geometry to the non-smooth setting. In particular, one can describe situations when space-time no longer has a manifold structure on the microscopic scale (like a space-time lattice or other discrete or continuous structures on the Planck scale). As a result, the theory of causal fermion systems is a proposal for quantum geometry and an approach to quantum gravity.

Causal fermion systems were introduced by Felix Finster and collaborators.

The physical starting point is the fact that the Dirac equation in Minkowski space has solutions of negative energy which are usually associated to the Dirac sea. Taking the concept seriously that the states of the Dirac sea form an integral part of the physical system, one finds that many structures (like the causal and metric structures as well as the bosonic fields) can be recovered from the wave functions of the sea states. This leads to the idea that the wave functions of all occupied states (including the sea states) should be regarded as the basic physical objects, and that all structures in space-time arise as a result of the collective interaction of the sea states with each other and with the additional particles and "holes" in the sea. Implementing this picture mathematically leads to the framework of causal fermion systems.

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