2005/07/26 by Brett Altschul, B. Altschul, Altschul, B.
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #hep-th #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0507252
12 pages, 1 figure; additional references added
openalex publication_date 2005/07/26 · arxiv created 2005/08/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We consider a scalar quantum field theory, in which the interaction takes the form of a field cutoff; the energy diverges to infinity whenever the value of the field at some point falls outside a finite interval. In a simple (1+1)-dimensional version of this theory, we may calculate the results of certain scattering processes exactly. The main feature of the nontrivial solutions is the appearance of shock fronts, whose time development is irreversible. The resulting nonunitarity implies that these theories are, at a minimum, radically different from conventional quantum field theories.