There is a pretty strong overlap between material science and quantum field theory. To name just one example, the idea of the Higg's particle actually has it's genesis in theoretical solid state physics [1].
Most material solids can be described as a lattice, where there is some unit cell of a given size, say L, which is repeated periodically in all directions.
There are various types "quasi-particles" that can move through a lattice, examples include phonon's and poloron's. The thing that makes the quasi-particle concept useful is that it is greatly simplifies the description of the collective motion of a large number of particles which are all interacting.
An electromagnetic field in a region of space can (sort of) be described as a lattice, and this result is one of the deepest and most profound results in theoretical physics, imo. The basic idea is the EM field can be thought of in the following way: every point in space can be treated mathematically as a simple vibrating spring (harmonic oscillator).
In other words, the analogy between fundamental particles and quasi-particles breaks down because in a material solid there is a unit cell of size L, but in the vacuum this lattice size is 0.
The idea that every point in space is a harmonic oscillator works in the sense that it makes predictions that agree with experiment; however theoretically it has an extremely severe flaw which has motivated a large amount of research on the quantum vacuum. The problem is that the energy of a region of space with zero EM field (i.e. a vacuum) comes out to be infinite. There are various tricks to avoid this infinity, but the simplest one is to just use some non-zero value for the lattice spacing of the vacuum.
Most material solids can be described as a lattice, where there is some unit cell of a given size, say L, which is repeated periodically in all directions.
There are various types "quasi-particles" that can move through a lattice, examples include phonon's and poloron's. The thing that makes the quasi-particle concept useful is that it is greatly simplifies the description of the collective motion of a large number of particles which are all interacting.
An electromagnetic field in a region of space can (sort of) be described as a lattice, and this result is one of the deepest and most profound results in theoretical physics, imo. The basic idea is the EM field can be thought of in the following way: every point in space can be treated mathematically as a simple vibrating spring (harmonic oscillator).
In other words, the analogy between fundamental particles and quasi-particles breaks down because in a material solid there is a unit cell of size L, but in the vacuum this lattice size is 0.
The idea that every point in space is a harmonic oscillator works in the sense that it makes predictions that agree with experiment; however theoretically it has an extremely severe flaw which has motivated a large amount of research on the quantum vacuum. The problem is that the energy of a region of space with zero EM field (i.e. a vacuum) comes out to be infinite. There are various tricks to avoid this infinity, but the simplest one is to just use some non-zero value for the lattice spacing of the vacuum.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Warren_Anderson