Advanced Effects in Particle Physics. I

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Abstract
The relation between causal sequence and time sequence of events is investigated. A theory is constructed which is able to describe the interaction of particles with arbitrary quantum numbers, and in which the elementary interaction is time-symmetric between effect and cause: The effect may precede as well as follow the cause. It is shown that in a many-particle universe, under certain conditions, effects mostly follow the cause, but that this phenomenon is a function of the coupling constants. The direction of time is correlated with the distribution of particles in four-dimensional space. The "velocity of time" (related to the average change of entropy per collision) is introduced and found to be almost zero for an almost empty universe. It is suggested that the causal chain may be closed in our universe. An experiment is described which may be able to test these ideas. In one of the appendices two generalizations of the optical theorem is given, the first of which is valid even if unitarity is not.

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