English

Minimal Length and Small Scale Structure of Spacetime

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2013-12-13 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Many generic arguments support the existence of a minimum spacetime interval L0L_0. Such a "zero-point" length can be naturally introduced in a locally Lorentz invariant manner via Synge's world function bi-scalar Ω(p,P)\Omega(p,P) which measures squared geodesic interval between spacetime events pp and PP. I show that there exists a \emph{non-local} deformation of spacetime geometry given by a \emph{disformal} coupling of metric to the bi-scalar Ω(p,P)\Omega(p,P), which yields a geodesic interval of L0L_0 in the limit pPp \rightarrow P. Locality is recovered when Ω(p,P)>>L02/2\Omega(p,P) >> L_0^2/2. I discuss several conceptual implications of the resultant small-scale structure of spacetime for QFT propagators as well as spacetime singularities.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1307.5618,
  title  = {Minimal Length and Small Scale Structure of Spacetime},
  author = {Dawood Kothawala},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.5618},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

v3: 6 pages; added details and a discussion on the relationship between minimal length and maximal acceleration; final version to appear in Phys. Rev. D

R2 v1 2026-06-22T00:55:13.774Z