In science, an effective theory is a scientific theory which proposes to describe a certain set of observations, but explicitly without the claim or implication that the mechanism used by the theory has a direct counterpart in the actual causes of the observed phenomena to which the theory is fitted. That means that the theory proposes to model a certain effect, without proposing to model adequately any of the causes which contribute to the effect.
For example, effective field theory is a method used to describe physical theories when there is a hierarchy of scales. Effective field theories in physics can include quantum field theories in which the fields are treated as fundamental, and effective theories describing phenomena in solid-state physics. For instance, the BCS theory of superconduction treats vibrations of the solid-state lattice as a "field" (i.e. without claiming that there is really a field), with its own field quanta, known as phonons. Such "effective particles" derived from effective fields are also known as quasiparticles.
In a certain sense, quantum field theory, and any other currently known physical theory, could be described as "effective", as in being the "low energy limit" of an as-yet unknown "Theory of Everything".[1]
YouTube Encyclopedic
-
1/3Views:5 2947371 825
-
Effective Field Theory | MITx on edX | Course About Video
-
15. Soft-Collinear Effective Theory (SCET) Introduction
-
6. Chiral Lagrangians
Transcription
See also
References
- ^ c.f. Stamatescu, Ion-Olimpiu; Seiler, Erhard (2007). Approaches to Fundamental Physics: An Assessment of Current Theoretical Ideas. Lecture Notes in Physics. Vol. 721. Springer. p. 47. ISBN 978-3-540-71115-5.
This page was last edited on 1 February 2023, at 20:09