Survey of two-time physics

By I. Bars. 2000

137 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Two-time physics (2T) is a general reformulation of one-time physics (1T) that displays previously unnoticed hidden symmetries in 1T dynamical systems and establishes previously unknown duality-type relations among them. This may play a role in displaying the symmetries and constructing the dynamics of little understood systems, such as M-theory. 2T-physics describes various 1T dynamical systems as different d-dimensional `holographic' views of the same 2T system in d + 2 dimensions. The `holography' is due to gauge symmetries that tend to reduce the number of effective dimensions. Different 1T evolutions (i.e. different Hamiltonians) emerge from the same 2T-theory when gauge fixing is done with different embeddings of d dimensions inside d + 2 dimensions. Thus, in the 2T setting, the distinguished 1T which we call `time' is a gauge-dependent concept. The 2T-action also has a global SO(d,2) symmetry in flat spacetime, or a more general d + 2 symmetry in curved spacetime, under which all dimensions are on an equal footing. This symmetry is observable in many 1T-systems, but it remained unknown until discovered in the 2T formalism. The symmetry takes various nonlinear (hidden) forms in the 1T-systems, and it is realized in the same irreducible unitary representation (the same Casimir eigenvalues) in their quantum Hilbert spaces. 2T-physics has mainly been developed in the context of particles, including spin and supersymmetry, but some advances have also been made with strings and p-branes, and insights for M-theory have already emerged. In the case of particles, there exists a general worldline formulation with background fields, as well as a field theory formulation, both described in terms of fields that depend on d + 2 coordinates. All 1T particle interactions with Yang-Mills, gravitational and other fields are included in the d + 2 reformulation. In particular, the standard model of particle physics can be regarded as a gauge-fixed form of a 2T-theory in 4 + 2 dimensions. These facts already provide evidence for a new type of higher-dimensional unification.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4405149d1033538da01d03816c8957bfc83e0252

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

  1. M. Grigoriev
  2. X. Bekaert

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

  1. M. Grigoriev
  2. X. Bekaert
  3. A. Sagnotti

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

  1. M. Grigoriev
  2. X. Bekaert

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