Covariant photon Fock space

ID: covariant-photon-fock-space

Covariant photon Fock space by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
The covariant free-photon oscillator construction uses four polarization vectors and . Starting from a positive Fock vacuum, it induces an indefinite Hermitian form on the multiparticle state space: the temporal oscillator has negative norm while the three spatial oscillators have positive norm. It is therefore not the physical positive Hilbert space. The Gupta-Bleuler null-state quotient selects a positive physical space with two transverse photon polarizations. Continuum momentum oscillators and their states are understood after smearing or finite-volume regularization.

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