Can we possibly create such a light wave which has a wavelength of Planck length so we can see the strings that the theory supposes there are?
Asked
Active
Viewed 266 times
0
-
Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/5057/2451 and links therein. – Qmechanic Jan 10 '17 at 18:52
-
This is similar to asking if we can create an elastic wave at the wavelength comparable to the size of atoms forming the solid where it spreads. No, because it makes no sense. – Conifold Jan 10 '17 at 19:41
1 Answers
3
Photons don't exist at the string length scale, or perhaps it's better to say that the photon is a poor description of the behaviour at that scale.
The photon arises from quantum field theory when we quantise the electromagnetic four potential. But quantum field theory emerges as a low energy approximation to string theory. So at string energy scales we have no quantum field theory and therefore we have no photons. At those energies everything is described using interactions of strings.
So we would not ever be able to see a string simply because at the string scale that concept has no meaning.
John Rennie
- 355,118
-
The string theory does have the photon. One can either describe the photon as a massless state of an open string or as a linearized deformation of the background in which the string propagates (which will be a gauge field living in the D-brane where the ending points are attached). Both descriptions are equivalent due to the state-operator correspondence of CFTs in the worldsheet formulation, so one is allowed to push this view of "seeing" the string using photons, which can be translated to a stringy scattering amplitude but do not need to. – Nogueira Dec 10 '22 at 22:01