What is a quantum? Is it a particle?

On Mar 6, 2011, at 7:25 PM, Paul Zielinski wrote:


"Do you agree that if the zero point free field is to be taken seriously, it should be uniquely determined, and
its physical properties should not depend on the choice of basis functions to be used to represent the
classical free field? "

The whole point of Unruh effect is that virtual zero point photons for a zero g-force non-rotating timelike geodesic LIF detectors look like thermal black body photons of Kelvin temperature hg/ckB where g is the proper off-geodesic acceleration of the detector. The quantum vacua for different g have UERs for their elementary excitations. Ordinary QFT is SEVERELY limited to unaccelerating detectors.


"Maybe I'm just confused, but given the remarks in the Crispino paper about the frame dependence of the
particle content of quantized fields, I'm now having serious doubts about the idea of field quanta as 'particles.'"

Strictly speaking, the qubit spaces are Bohm's (super) quantum potential not the hidden variable particle world lines in ordinary spacetime.

e.g. a*|0> = |1>  1-quantum of sharp momentum in Fock space

that shapes Q not the hidden variable "particle" on a classical path. Same for strings in 10 or 11D spacetime with branes instead of worldlines.