The Uncertainty of Fluxes
By D. Freed, G. Moore, G. Segal. 2006
138 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In the ordinary quantum Maxwell theory of a free electromagnetic field, formulated on a curved 3-manifold, we observe that magnetic and electric fluxes cannot be simultaneously measured. This uncertainty principle reflects torsion: fluxes modulo torsion can be simultaneously measured. We also develop the Hamilton theory of self-dual fields, noting that they are quantized by Pontrjagin self-dual cohomology theories and that the quantum Hilbert space is $${\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}}$$ -graded, so typically contains both bosonic and fermionic states. Significantly, these ideas apply to the Ramond-Ramond field in string theory, showing that its K-theory class cannot be measured.
Subfields: Mathematical Physics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e6dc42919d51d76cf2fb427ffde1d57ab192efcf
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In Mathematical Physics
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Citations in the corpus
- Heisenberg groups and noncommutative fluxes (2006, unknown): “W e explore severalapplications ofthis approach.”
- Split states, entropy enigmas, holes and halos (2007, background): “In this case one cannot simultaneously specify the electric and magnetic flux sectors on the D6 brane, and in fact, the ground states of the theory form a representation of the Heisenberg group extension of H(2) tors(X; Z) × H 5 tors(X; Z) defined by the torsion pairing [120, 121].”
- Generalized global symmetries (2014, background): “As in [21, 22], these operators satisfy a central extension of Z2 × Z2; i.”