Virtual Processes and Quantum Tunnelling as Fictions

In this paper it is argued that virtual processes are dispensable fictions. The argument proceeds by a comparison with the phenomenon of quantum tunnelling. Building on an analysis of Lévy-Leblond and Balibar, it is argued that, although the phenomenon known as quantum tunnelling certainly occurs and is at the basis of many paradigmatic quantum effects, the implied conceptualization of it as a free particle burrowing through a potential barrier …