Related papers: Physics on and off the light cone
The phenomenon of emergent physics in condensed-matter many-body systems has become the paradigm of modern physics, and can probably also be applied to high-energy physics and cosmology. This encouraging fact comes from the universal…
Quantum field theories with exact but spontaneously broken conformal invariance have an intriguing feature: their vacuum energy (cosmological constant) is equal to zero. Up to now, the only known ultraviolet complete theories where…
Crossing symmetry asserts that particles are indistinguishable from anti-particles traveling back in time. In quantum field theory, this statement translates to the long-standing conjecture that probabilities for observing the two scenarios…
Conformal self-dual fields in flat space-time of even dimension greater than or equal to four are studied. Ordinary-derivative formulation of such fields is developed. Gauge invariant Lagrangian with conventional kinetic terms and…
A lattice gauge theory with an action polynomial in independent field variables is considered. The link variables are described by unconstrained complex matrices instead of unitary ones. A mechanism which permits to switch off in the…
A recent refinement of Penrose's conformal framework for asymptotically flat space-times is summarized. The key idea concerns advanced and retarded conformal factors, which allow a rigid description of infinity as a locally metric light…
Although particle production in curved quantum field theories (cQFTs) is key to our understanding of the early universe and black hole physics, its direct observation requires extreme conditions or unrealistic sensitivities. Recent progress…
The reader surely knows what particles physics is about: finding building blocks of nature that appear elementary at a given time and study their interactions - so why in the world this essay? The problem is how to arrive at a fundamental…
We investigate spacetimes whose light cones could be anisotropic. We prove the equivalence of the structures: (a) Lorentz-Finsler manifold for which the mean Cartan torsion vanishes, (b) Lorentz-Finsler manifold for which the indicatrix…
We propose a general model where quintessence couples to electromagnetism via its kinetic term. This novelty generalizes the linear dependence of the gauge kinetic function on $\phi$, commonly adopted in the literature. The interaction…
This article shows that one can consistently incorporate nonunitary representations of at least one group into the ``ordinary'' nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. This group turns out to be Lorentz group thus giving us an alternative…
Spontaneous symmetry breaking is related to the appearance of emergent phenomena, while a non-vanishing order parameter has been viewed as the sign of turning into such symmetry breaking phase. Recently, we have proposed a continuous…
It is well known that a fundamental theorem of Quantum Field Theory (QFT) set in at spacetime ensures the CPT invariance of the theory. This symmetry is strictly connected to the Lorentz covariance, and consequently to the fundamental…
In this work, we investigate a theory of linear Weyl gravity coupled to a scalar field and study the scenario in which Lorentz symmetry is broken by a non-vanishing vacuum expectation value of the Weyl field in the flat space limit after…
The creation of electrically charged states and the resulting electromagnetic fields are considered in space-time regions in which such experiments can actually be carried out, namely in future-directed light cones. Under the simplifying…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
The shortening of bodies in the direction of motion, Lorentz contraction, follows from the solution of Maxwell's equations. Moving light clocks will tick slower than those at rest because the speed of light does not depend on a source of…
Penrose et al. investigated the physical incoherence of the spacetime with negative mass via the bending of light. Precise estimates of time-delay of null geodesics were needed and played a pivotal role in their proof. In this paper, we…
According to Belinsky, Khalatnikov and Lifshitz, gravity near a space-like singularity reduces to a set of decoupled one-dimensional mechanical models at each point in space. We point out that these models fall into a class of conformal…
In the first part of my lectures, I will use the example of deep-inelastic scattering to explain why light-front coordinates play a distinguished role in many high energy scattering experiments. After a brief introduction into the concept…