Particle propagators on discrete spacetime
High Energy Physics - Theory
2008-11-26 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Abstract
A quantum mechanical description of particle propagation on the discrete spacetime of a causal set is presented. The model involves a discrete path integral in which trajectories within the causal set are summed over to obtain a particle propagator. The sum-over-trajectories is achieved by a matrix geometric series. For causal sets generated by sprinkling points into 1+1 and 3+1 dimensional Minkowski spacetime the propagator calculated on the causal set is shown to agree, in a suitable sense, with the causal retarded propagator for the Klein-Gordon equation. The particle propagator described here is a step towards quantum field theory on causal set spacetime.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0806.3083,
title = {Particle propagators on discrete spacetime},
author = {Steven Johnston},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.3083},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
14 pages, no figures. Minor updates to match published version