Related papers: Simultaneity in Minkowski spacetime: from uniquene…
This paper, which is meant to be a tribute to Minkowski's geometrical insight, rests on the idea that the basic observed symmetries of spacetime homogeneity and of isotropy of space, which are displayed by the spacetime manifold in the…
Spacetime singularities in general relativity are commonly thought to be problematic, in that they signal a breakdown in the theory. We address the question of how to interpret this breakdown, restricting our attention to classical…
We recall that the Minkowskian geometry possesses basic units of space and time which are invariant under the Poincar\'{e} symmetry. We then show that, by comparison, the Riemannian geometry possesses space-time units which are not…
This is the written version of a talk I gave at the 35th Symposium Ahrenshoop in Berlin, Germany, August 2002. It is an exposition of joint work with S. Doplicher, K. Fredenhagen, and Gh. Piacitelli [1]. The violation of unitarity found in…
We construct a Dirac equation that is consistent with one of the recently-proposed schemes for a "doubly-special relativity", a relativity with both an observer-independent velocity scale (still naturally identified with the speed-of-light…
Several new ideas related to Special and General Relativity are proposed. The black-box method is used for the synchronization of the clocks and the space axes between two inertial systems or two accelerated systems and for the derivation…
We construct a duality between several simple physical systems by showing that they are different aspects of the same quantum theory. Examples include the free relativistic massless particle and the hydrogen atom in any number of…
The special theory of relativity has fundamentally changed our views of space and time. The relativity of simultaneity in particular, and the theory of relativity as a whole, still presents significant difficulty for beginners in the…
We offer further evidence that discreteness of the sort inherent in a causal set cannot, in and of itself, serve to break Poincar{\'e} invariance. In particular we prove that a Poisson sprinkling of Minkowski spacetime cannot endow…
In 1908, Minkowski put forward the idea that invariance under what we call today the Lorentz group, $GL(1,3, {\bf R})$, would be more meaningful in a four-dimensional space-time continuum. This suggestion implies that space and time are…
We address an old open question in convex geometry that dates back to the work of Minkowski: what are the equality cases of the monotonicity of mixed volumes? The problem is equivalent to that of providing a geometric characterization of…
The synchronization of loosely coupled chaotic oscillators, a phenomenon investigated intensively for the last two decades, may realize the philosophical notion of synchronicity. Effectively unpredictable chaotic systems, coupled through…
Minkowski diagrams in 1+1 dimensional flat space-time are given a strictly geometric derivation, directly from two gedanken experiments incorporating the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light and the principle of (special)…
The axiomatic bases of Special Relativity Theory (SRT) are thoroughly re-examined from an operational point of view, with particular emphasis on the status of Einstein synchronization in the light of the possibility of arbitrary…
We study the limits to the localizability of events and reference frames in the $\kappa$-Minkowski quantum spacetime. Our main tool will be a representation of the $\kappa$-Minkowski commutation relations between coordinates, and the…
Space-like and time-like invariant space-time intervals are used to analyse measurements of spatial and temporal distances. The former are found to be Lorentz invariant --there is no `relativistic length contraction', whereas the latter…
We have investigated some issues relevant for the possibility to construct physical theories on the $\kappa$-Minkowski noncommutative spacetime. The notion of field in $\kappa$-Minkowski has been introduced by generalizing the Weyl…
The standard relativistic theory of accelerated reference frames in Minkowski spacetime is described. The measurements of accelerated observers are considered and the limitations of the standard theory, based on the hypothesis of locality,…
The picture of space-time that Minkowski created in 1907 has been followed by two important developments in physics not contained in the original picture: general relativity and quantum mechanics. We will argue that the use of concepts of…
This survey article reviews recent results on fermion system in discrete space-time and corresponding systems in Minkowski space. After a basic introduction to the discrete setting, we explain a mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking…