For an overview of applications of p-adic numbers in physics I would refer to the two links I added in the comment field, and to this <A HREF="https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/p-adic+physics">nLab entry.</A> Regarding the second question "*What is the most convincing justification in physics that we need to work over the field of real or complex numbers*" I would like to quote Freeman Dyson in <A HREF="http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200212p.pdf">Birds and Frogs:</A> > When I look at the history of mathematics, I see a succession of > illogical jumps, improbable coincidences, jokes of nature. One of the > most profound jokes of nature is the square root of minus one that the > physicist Erwin Schrödinger put into his wave equation when he > invented wave mechanics in 1926. Starting from wave optics as a model, > he wrote down a differential equation for a mechanical particle, but > the equation made no sense. The equation looked like the equation of > conduction of heat in a continuous medium. Heat conduction has no > visible relevance to particle mechanics. Schrödinger’s idea seemed to > be going nowhere. But then came the surprise. Schrödinger put the > square root of minus one into the equation, and suddenly it made > sense. Suddenly it became a wave equation instead of a heat conduction > equation. And Schrödinger found to his delight that the equation has > solutions corresponding to the quantized orbits in the Bohr model of > the atom. > > It turns out that the Schrödinger equation describes correctly > everything we know about the behavior of atoms. It is the basis of all > of chemistry and most of physics. **And that square root of minus one > means that nature works with complex numbers and not with real > numbers.** > > All through the nineteenth century, mathematicians from Abel to > Riemann and Weierstrass had been creating a magnificent theory of > functions of complex variables. They had discovered that the theory of > functions became far deeper and more powerful when it was extended > from real to complex numbers. But they always thought of complex > numbers as an artificial construction, invented by human > mathematicians as a useful and elegant abstraction from real life. It > never entered their heads that this artificial number system that they > had invented was in fact the ground on which atoms move. They never > imagined that nature had got there first.