Non-perturbative qft methods and their applications : proceedings of the 24th Johns Hopkins Workshop, Bolyai College, Budapest, Hungary, 19-21 August 2000

This book gives a comprehensive account of local quantum physics, understood as the synthesis of quantum theory with the principle of locality. Centered on the algebraic approach it describes both the physical concepts and the mathematical structures, and their consequences. These include the emergence of the particle picture, general collision theory covering the cases of massless particles and infraparticles, the analysis of possible charge structures and exchange symmetries, including braid group statistics. Thermal states of an unbounded medium and local equilibrium are discussed in detail. The author takes care both to describe the ideas and to give a critical assessment of future perspectives. The new edition contains numerous improvements and a new chapter concerning formalism and interpretation of quantum theory