17,162 research outputs found
Electromagnetism, local covariance, the Aharonov-Bohm effect and Gauss' law
We quantise the massless vector potential A of electromagnetism in the
presence of a classical electromagnetic (background) current, j, in a generally
covariant way on arbitrary globally hyperbolic spacetimes M. By carefully
following general principles and procedures we clarify a number of topological
issues. First we combine the interpretation of A as a connection on a principal
U(1)-bundle with the perspective of general covariance to deduce a physical
gauge equivalence relation, which is intimately related to the Aharonov-Bohm
effect. By Peierls' method we subsequently find a Poisson bracket on the space
of local, affine observables of the theory. This Poisson bracket is in general
degenerate, leading to a quantum theory with non-local behaviour. We show that
this non-local behaviour can be fully explained in terms of Gauss' law. Thus
our analysis establishes a relationship, via the Poisson bracket, between the
Aharonov-Bohm effect and Gauss' law (a relationship which seems to have gone
unnoticed so far). Furthermore, we find a formula for the space of electric
monopole charges in terms of the topology of the underlying spacetime. Because
it costs little extra effort, we emphasise the cohomological perspective and
derive our results for general p-form fields A (p < dim(M)), modulo exact
fields. In conclusion we note that the theory is not locally covariant, in the
sense of Brunetti-Fredenhagen-Verch. It is not possible to obtain such a theory
by dividing out the centre of the algebras, nor is it physically desirable to
do so. Instead we argue that electromagnetism forces us to weaken the axioms of
the framework of local covariance, because the failure of locality is
physically well-understood and should be accommodated.Comment: Minor corrections to Def. 4.3, acknowledgements and typos, in line
with published versio
Further properties of causal relationship: causal structure stability, new criteria for isocausality and counterexamples
Recently ({\em Class. Quant. Grav.} {\bf 20} 625-664) the concept of {\em
causal mapping} between spacetimes --essentially equivalent in this context to
the {\em chronological map} one in abstract chronological spaces--, and the
related notion of {\em causal structure}, have been introduced as new tools to
study causality in Lorentzian geometry. In the present paper, these tools are
further developed in several directions such as: (i) causal mappings --and,
thus, abstract chronological ones-- do not preserve two levels of the standard
hierarchy of causality conditions (however, they preserve the remaining levels
as shown in the above reference), (ii) even though global hyperbolicity is a
stable property (in the set of all time-oriented Lorentzian metrics on a fixed
manifold), the causal structure of a globally hyperbolic spacetime can be
unstable against perturbations; in fact, we show that the causal structures of
Minkowski and Einstein static spacetimes remain stable, whereas that of de
Sitter becomes unstable, (iii) general criteria allow us to discriminate
different causal structures in some general spacetimes (e.g. globally
hyperbolic, stationary standard); in particular, there are infinitely many
different globally hyperbolic causal structures (and thus, different conformal
ones) on , (iv) plane waves with the same number of positive eigenvalues
in the frequency matrix share the same causal structure and, thus, they have
equal causal extensions and causal boundaries.Comment: 33 pages, 9 figures, final version (the paper title has been
changed). To appear in Classical and Quantum Gravit
On the spin-statistics connection in curved spacetimes
The connection between spin and statistics is examined in the context of
locally covariant quantum field theory. A generalization is proposed in which
locally covariant theories are defined as functors from a category of framed
spacetimes to a category of -algebras. This allows for a more operational
description of theories with spin, and for the derivation of a more general
version of the spin-statistics connection in curved spacetimes than previously
available. The proof involves a "rigidity argument" that is also applied in the
standard setting of locally covariant quantum field theory to show how
properties such as Einstein causality can be transferred from Minkowski
spacetime to general curved spacetimes.Comment: 17pp. Contribution to the proceedings of the conference "Quantum
Mathematical Physics" (Regensburg, October 2014
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