Virtual particles Definition and 189 Threads

The following is taken from page 13 of Peskin and Schroeder. Any relativistic process cannot be assumed to be explained in terms of a single particle, since ##E=mc^{2}## allows for the creation of particle-antiparticle pairs. Even when there is not enough energy for pair creation, multiparticle...

Hello, I was curiose as to if it is possible for a virtual particle to appear without its anti-mater/matter counter part. I posted a thread before asking about the existence and untimatly the "realness" of virtual particles. I concluded that they are real from the Casimir effect (i may have...

Hello, My question on virtual particles is quite simple but I cannot find an answer. Are virtual particles just a filler for math or do they actually come into existence?

[Mentor's note - this post was moved from this thread and both the title and the tag were assigned as part of moving the post into a new thread - if you disagree with eiether don't yell at @andresB because he didn't do it] For some reason, PhysicsForum tend to become very hostile for Ops asking...

Do separate instances of virtual pair production interact with each other. Say you have a virtual pair production of an electron and a positron; they separate and then come back together. What happens in the event that there is another occurrence of a virtual electron/positron pair production...

Just as there are virtual photons, which are in the EM field, are there virtual particles in fields such as the Higgs and Strong?

Hi all, This question is similar to a question asked previously, but slightly different. I understand that there have now been attempts to extend the Broglie-Bohm, or Pilot Wave, interpretation of QM to QFT. I'm a layman, but if I understand correctly, the standard method for computing the...

This is just a short question, it might have been asked already but I couldn't find anything. I read that we have attempted to reconcile the Casimir force with the observed expansion of the universe, doing this, we get a number 10^120 times too big. This is obviously a bad number to say the...

It's easy to find references which explain that the photon is the force carrying particle for the electromagnetic force (ie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_carrier). Similarly there are force carrying particles for other forces, like W and Z bosons carry the weak force. This has always...

Hi guys i don't know much about physics but I am interested in learning about it i have According to wikipedia virtual particle hasnt never been observed but i think that they are wrong it has been observed in this experiment...

I was just wondering, when particles interact with a force (which would be all the time) , does it cause the wave function to collapse? If so does that mean particles interact with forces in small time periods, since we know particles exist as a probability function? I just assumed that fields...

1).Virtual Photons forms in pairs like particles and anti particles? or 2).by borrowing energy from future? or 3) in both ways?

Wikipedia says that virtual particles can not be observed, they are a handy concept for understanding what happens in quantum interactions, annihilating each other before they can be detected as real particles. However it also says that under certain circumstances, if they are moved apart from...

what is the correct understanding of a virtual particle? the popular science books would have us believe that a virtual particle magically pops up out of the woodwork, steals some energy and then puts it back before it ( the particl) disappears. Like a thieving employee who steal $100 out of the...

I was reading a lot that "Virtual particles are just math..." and many physicists for some reason get angry explaining it. But I suspect this point of view is interpretation-biased and is outdated for 3 reasons listed below: 1. The (mathematical) discovery of Quantum Decoherence had provided a...

from what i understand they pop into and out of existence because + 1 - 1 = 0 and because quantum mechanics... and that's the same reason we have matter in the first place, right? because we had anti matter and matter (from virtual particles, right?) in the beginning of the observable...

I was reading "Black Holes and Time Warps" by Kip Thorne, and right around p.442-443 it talks about how the quantum vacuum fluctuations that give rise to Hawking radiation from an infalling frame of reference give rise to an "atmosphere" of real, non-virtual particles in an accelerated frame...

As far as I know, forces are supposed to be mediated by virtual particles. Let's take the example of a magnetic field, mediated by photons. This seems to be a good idea, because it sort of eliminates the nasty concept of a field, which is just an abstract concept. This has been bothering me...

If virtual particles are constantly popping in and out of existence all around us, what gravitational effect does this have? Even if they are here for the briefest of moments they should be effected by gravity and have their own gravitational effect on other matter...shouldn't they?

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This oft-referenced picture depicts a simulation of virtual particles popping into and out of existence in the empty space inside a proton, ie between the quarks: http://bsturge93.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/empty-space.jpg?w=300&h=242 My question is whether the intensity of this popping...

Recently, I was reading about Hawking Radiation in A Brief History of Time. It says that at no point can all the fields be zero and so there's nothing like empty space(quantum fluctuation etc.). Now, the reason mentioned was that virtual(force-carrier) particles cannot have both a precise rate...

Hi, So i can accept that photons are virtual particles for the electromagnetic force but i have a question. Considering two stationary point charges. There are photon-like particles exchanged between them to produce the force? If so then placing a double slit between them should create some...

I'm trying to understand the process that destroys particles very shortly after they "appear". I have read that they are usually annihilated by a virtual antiparticle, much in the same way as can happen to real particles. However, is this always the case? And if so, is it an intrinsic property...

So virtual particles are supposed to pop into and out of existence because the uncertainty principle dictates a non-zero ground state of energy. My question is what causes the virtual particles to separate from each other, presumably with some velocity with respect to each other. And then...

We know electric current travels around 200000 km/s.. Yet electrons are moving way much slower, just acting as a medium for the transportation of the energy. Can same principle apply for light? Although the energy flows at 300000 km/s the photons may actually not? Like, the energy traveling...

There is a type of exchange of particles which is generalised by a type of potential: \frac{e^{-\alpha\r}}{R} This potential is used to explain the exchange of bounded particles (e.g a poin between neutron and proton) between two possible configurations. The potential comes from the fact that...

Can somebody explain to me exactly what Virtual Particles are (Like the Higgs Boson) and their respective virtual fields, like what properties do they possesses compared to matter? Are there anti virtual particles? If Someone could give a basic introduction, that would be greatly appreciated...

I'm trying to understand the nature of the virtual particles that exists in empty space. I understand that they 'bubble' in and out of existence, but why do they exist in the vacuum of space? If all particles spend some of their time as virtual particles, does quantum mechanics suggest that some...

So many prominent physicists have argued that the universe may have formed within a vacuum from a virtual particle (either with no energy or without an opposite pair etc...). It’s the classical something from nothing argument. However, could it not be argued that a “vacuum” within our...

I was recently told virtual particles don't cause decoherence. Why not? Do they just never interact with their environment (apart from transferring energy/force) so they can never collapse a wavefunction?

What distiguishes real and virtual particles? Virtual photons, virtual gluons and virtual W particles are often referred to in discussing the interactions they determine. Why and when are they virtual? Why and when are they real?

I sincerely apologise if this has been asked previously, I searched via Google and have been unable to find an answer I understand. How does the de Broglie-Bohm, or Pilot Wave, interpretation, well interpret virtual particles. The beauty of the deBB interpretation seems to be the unity of the...

Hey guys, first post here. I'm just starting to learn physics at the college level, so keep that in mind. While doing some reading on dark energy and dark matter, something occurred to me that I'd never had answered before. Do virtual particles exist long enough to have even a slight...

So De Sitter Space has a constant scalar curvature in the absence of energy or mass where positive curvature corresponds to a repulsive force and negative curvature corresponds to an attractive force. My question is could "virtual particles" be replaced by De Sitter and Anti-De Sitter spaces? I...

So as I was taught in Modern Physics virtual particles are allowed to exist in virtue of "borrowing" energy from the vacuum as long as it is "re-paid" in a short enough time to satisfy the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. However after doing further research this doesn't seem to be the whole...

I'm planning on doing my 4000-word extended essay for International Baccalaureate on virtual particles (theoretical and particle physics really interest me). I'm starting to get quite stressed, though, as summer is half over, and we were advised to have, at the least, our research done by...

First time poster, more of a nerd than an academic. So virtual particles, can they pop into and out of existence inside the event horizon of a black hole? What about in the black hole itself? If nothing can escape and matter is torn apart, what happens to those quantum particles? Or maybe...

I often hear or read of virtual particles appearing because they borrow energy from the vacuum fluctuations, but they "return" the energy back to the vacuum so that there are no imbalances. Wait a minute. Doesn't the insights of relativity tell us there is no such thing as just energy or mass...

By looking at layman's books on physics I have picked up the idea that "virtual" particle-antiparticle pairs continually pop out of the vacuum and then back into it again. Apparently according to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle the time that the particle pair can exist, \Delta t, is...

I have seen an argument that the time-energy uncertainty relation allows heavy particles to exist for short periods of time as virtual particles: (ΔE Δt)>h Δt>h/ΔE However, shouldn't the inequality be the other way: Δt<h/ΔE to suggest that a heavy particle with large ΔE can exist...

(First off, I'm not sure that I'm asking this question in the right area, but there does seem to be other questions associated with the topic, so hopefully I'm ok, but if I'm wrong, apologies.) I understand that virtual particles are... virtual, a mathematical construct that is used to describe...

Hi, so we have just started doing some physics of fundamental particles etc at school. i am reading a lot about the exchange of 'virtual' photons etc. i am confused about whether these particles actually exist in a physical sense or whether they just have to be there to conserve...

Would it be fair to describe the Unruh effect by saying that from the perspective of an accelerated observer, some virtual particles in an inertial frame become real particles in the accelerated frame? Wald talks about how the appropriate transformations between inertial and accelerated...

First I would like to apalogize if this is not right thread for my question, but I am not sure where to put it. If I understand it right, vacuum is actually full of virtual particles and antiparticles popping into existence and anihilating again and that always particle and antiparticle are...

I wasn't sure where to put this question, since it didn't seem to fit any category. However, because it brings up the topic of virtual particles, I'll ask here. From what I understand, virtual particles can travel faster than light, and it is virtual photons that are responsible for the...

All I ever hear about Feynman’s virtual particles is that they are created then destroy each other in a short period of time. I was wondering what else we know about these particles? How often is this occurring? How big are these particles? What if any affects do these particles have on...

Im a grade 12 student and I just started reading black holes aint so black in the brief history of time. However, I'm having a hard time distinguishing a difference between these two particles. What is a difference? thanks!

On yahoo I asked if "since virtual particles cone to existence out of nothing. Is it possible that anything else ( discovered or not yet discovered in any universe) would be able to do the same, besides other virtual particles " And I got this answer Is it correct? "No. Virtual...

Using a simulated rapid-moving mirror, scientists provided evidence the existence of virtual photons by coaxing them out of a vacuum by means of the dynamical Casimir effect: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/111117_casimir.htm As a layman, I will reserve judgement until the experts...