Are inertial vacua equivalent in Lorentz-violating theories? Does it matter?

Several approaches to quantum gravity suggest violations of Lorentz symmetry as low-energy signatures. This article uses a concrete Lorentz-violating quantum field theory to study different inertial vacua. We show that they are unitarily inequivalent and that the vacuum in one inertial frame appears...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2023-02
Main Authors: Costa, Bruno Arderucio, Bonder, Yuri, Juárez-Aubry, Benito A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Quantum gravity
Quantum theory
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Several approaches to quantum gravity suggest violations of Lorentz symmetry as low-energy signatures. This article uses a concrete Lorentz-violating quantum field theory to study different inertial vacua. We show that they are unitarily inequivalent and that the vacuum in one inertial frame appears, in a different inertial frame, to be populated with particles of arbitrarily high momenta. At first sight, this poses a critical challenge to the physical validity of Lorentz-violating theories, since we do not witness vacuum excitations by changing inertial frames. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that inertial Unruh-De Witt detectors are insensitive to these effects. We also discuss the Hadamard condition for this Lorentz-violating theory.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2301.06600