English

Local Lorentz covariance in finite-dimensional Local Quantum Physics

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2017-12-07 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory Mathematical Physics math.MP Quantum Physics

Abstract

We show that local Lorentz covariance arises canonically as the group of transformations between local thermal states in the framework of Local Quantum Physics, given the following three postulates: (i) Local observable algebras are finite-dimensional. (ii) Minimal local observable algebras are isomorphic to M2(C)\mathbb{M}_2(\mathbb{C}), the observable algebra of a single qubit. (iii) The vacuum restricted to any minimal local observable algebra is a non-maximally mixed thermal state. The derivation reveals a new and surprising relation between spacetime structure and local quantum states. In particular, we show how local restrictions of the vacuum can determine the connection between different local inertial reference frames.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1705.06711,
  title  = {Local Lorentz covariance in finite-dimensional Local Quantum Physics},
  author = {Matti Raasakka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1705.06711},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

7 pages; v3: Minor typos fixed, matches the published version. v2: The definition of local Hamiltonians is slightly changed from the previous version in order to better justify the physical identification of SL(2,C) transformations with Lorentz transformations. The rest of the paper has been modified to accommodate this change

R2 v1 2026-06-22T19:51:43.980Z