Possible violations of spacetime symmetries

30th Annual Meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields (DPyC) of the Mexican Physical Society

Urrutia, Luis^1

Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México

04510, Mexico^1

关键词: Discrete structure;    Lorentz symmetry breaking;    Modern physics;    Physical phenomena;    Quantum gravity;    Space time symmetry;    Theoretical approach;    Zeroth order approximation;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/761/1/012056/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/761/1/012056

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

The identification of symmetries has played a fundamental role in our understanding of physical phenomena. Nevertheless, in most cases such symmetries constitute only a zeroth-order approximation and they need to be broken so that the predictions of the theory are consistent with experimental observation. In particular, the almost sacred CPT and Lorentz symmetries, which are certainly part of the fundamental ideas of modern physics, need to be probed experimentally. Recently, such efforts have been intensified because different theoretical approaches aiming to understand the microstructure of space-time suggest the possibility that such symmetries could present minute violations. Up to now, and with increasing experimental sensitivities, no signs of violation have been found. Nevertheless, we observe that even the persistence of such negative results will have a profound impact. On one hand, they will provide those symmetries with a firm experimental basis. On the other, they will set stringent experimental bounds to be compared with the possible emergence of such violations in quantum gravity models based upon a discrete structure of space. We present a very general perspective of the research on Lorentz symmetry breaking, together with a review of a few specific topics.