Feynman's Branes and Feynman's Oscillators

Abstract

Based on Feynman's lifetime efforts on quantum mechanics and relativity, it is concluded that the basic difference between field theory and string theory is that field theory is based on running waves while string theory should deal with standing waves in the Lorentz-covariant regime. At the 1970 spring meeting of the American Physical Society held in Washington, DC, R. P. Feynman stunned the audience by proposing harmonic oscillators for relativistic bound states, instead of Feynman diagrams. His talk was later published in the paper of Feynman, Kislinger, and Ravndal [Phys. Rev. D, Vol. 3, 2706 (1971)]. These authors noted that the hadron mass spectra can be predicted by the degeneracy of the three-dimensional harmonic oscillators. In so doing, they started with the Lorentz-invariant differential equation for the harmonic oscillator, and obtained Lorentz invariant solutions. However, their solutions are not normalizable in the time-separation variable and cannot carry probability interpretation. It is pointed out that there are solutions normalizable in the time-separation variable within the framework of Wigner's little-group representation of the Poincaré group. These solutions are not invariant but covariant under Lorentz transformations. These solutions give a covariant bound-state model which gives the quark model and the parton model as two different limiting cases, in the low- and high-speed limits respectively.