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JOURNALS // Pis'ma v Zhurnal Èksperimental'noi i Teoreticheskoi Fiziki // Archive

Pis'ma v Zh. Èksper. Teoret. Fiz., 2014 Volume 99, Issue 8, Pages 552–557 (Mi jetpl3721)

This article is cited in 3 papers

METHODS OF THEORETICAL PHYSICS

Emergent Weyl fermions and the origin of $i=\sqrt{-1}$ in quantum mechanics

G. E. Volovikab, M. A. Zubkovcd

a L. D. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences
b Aalto University, School of Science and Technology
c University of Western Ontario, Department of Mathematics, London, Ontario
d Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (Russian Federation State Scientific Center), Moscow

Abstract: Conventional quantum mechanics is described in terms of complex numbers. However, all physical quantities are real. This indicates, that the appearance of complex numbers in quantum mechanics may be the emergent phenomenon, i.e. complex numbers appear in the low energy description of the underlined high energy theory. We suggest a possible explanation of how this may occur. Namely, we consider the system of multi-component Majorana fermions. There is a natural description of this system in terms of real numbers only. In the vicinity of the topologically protected Fermi point this system is described by the effective low energy theory with Weyl fermions. These Weyl fermions interact with the emergent gauge field and the emergent gravitational field.

Received: 12.03.2014

Language: English

DOI: 10.7868/S0370274X14080128


 English version:
Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters, 2014, 99:8, 481–486

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