English

Discreteness of Space from GUP II: Relativistic Wave Equations

High Energy Physics - Theory 2014-11-21 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Quantum Physics

Abstract

Various theories of Quantum Gravity predict modifications of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle near the Planck scale to a so-called Generalized Uncertainty Principle (GUP). In some recent papers, we showed that the GUP gives rise to corrections to the Schrodinger equation, which in turn affect all quantum mechanical Hamiltonians. In particular, by applying it to a particle in a one dimensional box, we showed that the box length must be quantized in terms of a fundamental length (which could be the Planck length), which we interpreted as a signal of fundamental discreteness of space itself. In this paper, we extend the above results to a relativistic particle in a rectangular as well as a spherical box, by solving the GUP-corrected Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations, and for the latter, to two and three dimensions. We again arrive at quantization of box length, area and volume and an indication of the fundamentally grainy nature of space. We discuss possible implications.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1005.3368,
  title  = {Discreteness of Space from GUP II: Relativistic Wave Equations},
  author = {Saurya Das and Elias C. Vagenas and Ahmed Farag Ali},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1005.3368},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

v1:8 pages, revtex4, no figures, to appear in Phys. Lett. B; v2: version to match published version in PLB, corrections in ERRATUM included