The Quest for Understanding in Relativistic Quantum Physics

We discuss the status and some perspectives of relativistic quantum physics.Comment: Invited contribution to the Special Issue 2000 of the Journal of Mathematical Physics, 38 pages, typos corrected and references added, as to appear in JM

Bell's local causality is a d-separation criterion

This paper aims to motivate Bell's notion of local causality by means of Bayesian networks. In a locally causal theory any superluminal correlation should be screened off by atomic events localized in any so-called \textit{shielder-off region} in the past of one of the correlating events. In a Bayesian network any correlation between non-descendant random variables are screened off by any so-called \textit{d-separating set} of variables. We will argue that the shielder-off regions in the definition of local causality conform in a well defined sense to the d-separating sets in Bayesian networks.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Bell's local causality is a d-separation criterion

This paper aims to motivate Bell’s notion of local causality by means of Bayesian networks. In a locally causal theory any superluminal correlation should be screened off by atomic events localized in any so-called shielder-off region in the past of one of the correlating events. In a Bayesian network any correlation between non-descendant random variables are screened off by any so-called d-separating set of variables. We will argue that the shielder-off regions in the definition of local causality conform in a well defined sense to the d-separating sets in Bayesian networks

THE SUPERSELECTION STRUCTURE OF PARTICLE PHYSICS

I want to report on some joint work with Sergio Doolicher and E. Roberts which extended over the past 5 years. It concerns the origin of charge quatum numbers and particle statistics in relativistic, local quantum theory with short range forces and the classification of the possibilities allowed by the basic principles . A bibliography of this and earlier work on the same lines is attached (ref . (1) to (7)). In the available time I can, of course, only gives a very incomplete accomt but hope to be able to sketch the physical backgromd, the theoretical framework used and the main resulte in an understandable way suppressing all detailed arguments and proofs

Some people and some problems met in half a century of commitment to mathematical physics

Personnal recollection of half a century of Mathematical Physics