Principle of relative locality

By Giovanni Amelino-Camelia, L. Freidel, Jerzy Kowalski-Glikman, Lee Smolin. 2011

390 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We propose a deepening of the relativity principle according to which the invariant arena for nonquantum physics is a phase space rather than spacetime. Descriptions of particles propagating and interacting in spacetimes are constructed by observers, but different observers, separated from each other by translations, construct different spacetime projections from the invariant phase space. Nonetheless, all observers agree that interactions are local in the spacetime coordinates constructed by observers local to them. This framework, in which absolute locality is replaced by relative locality, results from deforming energy-momentum space, just as the passage from absolute to relative simultaneity results from deforming the linear addition of velocities. Different aspects of energy-momentum space geometry, such as its curvature, torsion and nonmetricity, are reflected in different kinds of deformations of the energy-momentum conservation laws. These are in principle all measurable by appropriate experiments. We also discuss a natural set of physical hypotheses which singles out the cases of energy-momentum space with a metric compatible connection and constant curvature.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7d4f922c543260c27dec6d352a8fe8e5fbc0f35b

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Citations in the corpus

Quantum-Spacetime Phenomenology (2008, background): “I am confident that some of the most recent DSR studies, particularly those centered on the analysis of the “relative locality” [71, 504, 88, 67], contain the core ideas that in due time will allow us to fully establish a robust DSR picture of spacetime, but I nonetheless feel that we are still far ”
Fundamental quantum optics experiments conceivable with satellites—reaching relativistic distances and velocities (2012, background): “Only very recently [124] was it understood that these spacetime features were to be described in terms of relative locality (see later parts of this section).”
Minimal Length Scale Scenarios for Quantum Gravity (2012, background): “One can expect that recent work on the principle of relative locality [287, 286, 169, 27, 23, 21, 79] will shed light on this question.”
Tests of Lorentz invariance: a 2013 update (2013, background): “This framework is based on the idea that the invariant arena for classical physics is a curved momentum space rather than spacetime (the latter being a derived concept) [91, 92, 93, 94, 95].”
The Spin-Foam Approach to Quantum Gravity (2012, background): “For a recent proposal of a completely new theoretical framework see [22] and references therein.”