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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Advance Access published online on March 1, 2009
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, doi:10.1093/bjps/axp009
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Antimatter

David John Baker

Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA djbaker{at}umich.edu

Hans Halvorson

Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA hhalvors{at}princeton.edu


  Abstract

The nature of antimatter is examined in the context of algebraic quantum field theory. It is shown that the notion of antimatter is more general than that of antiparticles. Properly speaking, then, antimatter is not matter made up of antiparticles—rather, antiparticles are particles made up of antimatter. We go on to discuss whether the notion of antimatter is itself completely general in quantum field theory. Does the matter–antimatter distinction apply to all field theoretic systems? The answer depends on which of several possible criteria we should impose on the space of physical states.

  1. Introduction
  2. Antiparticles on the Naive Picture
  3. The Incompleteness of the Naive Picture
  4. Group Representation Magic
  5. What Makes the Magic Work?
    5.1 Superselection rules
    5.2 DHR representations
    5.3 Gauge groups and the Doplicher–Roberts reconstruction

  6. A Quite General Notion of Antimatter
  7. Conclusions


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