RUI: Studies of Lorentz Violation

该奖项资助加州理工州立大学马修·梅维斯教授的研究活动。洛伦兹不变性是狭义相对论的基础，被认为是自然的精确对称性。这是粒子物理标准模型和广义相对论的一个特征。因此，任何违反这一基本原理的行为都将是新物理学的信号。此外，统一标准模型和广义相对论的尝试表明，洛伦兹不变性在低能量下可能会被轻微破坏。Mewes教授的研究集中在Lorentz对称性破缺的理论描述和可能的实验签名的识别上。这个项目的目标是扩展现有的理论，以包括非常广泛的一类洛伦兹不变性违反。到目前为止，大多数关于洛伦兹违规的研究都集中在最简单、最小的违规行为上。这个项目旨在理解更普遍的非最小违规行为的理论和实验意义。这一领域的研究通过促进科学在其最基本的方向之一--发现和理解新的物理定律--的进步来促进国家利益。此外，这项工作的一部分将对本科生开放，并将为加州大学保利分校的物理专业学生提供研究机会。加州大学保利分校是一所以本科为主的院校。参与这项研究的学生将获得宝贵的接触理论物理的机会。用更专业的术语来说，这个项目试图填补被称为标准-模型-扩展(SME)的理论框架中的几个主要空白。SME旨在提供任何系统中洛伦兹违规的一般描述。这种方法的一般性意味着，整个中小企业包含无限数量的违规行为。为了使问题易于处理，大多数研究都集中在最小SME上，这限制了人们对具有可重整化质量维度的算子的关注。然而，有理由怀疑不可重新正规化的违规行为可能占主导地位。最近的研究系统地研究了光子和自由费米子中的不可重整化破坏。这个项目将在这项工作的基础上，通过研究光子和费米子之间的规范相互作用中的违规来进行。它还将通过考虑广义相对论中的高阶非最小违规来扩展我们对引力潜在违规的理解。

This award funds the research activities of Professor Matthew Mewes at California Polytechnic State University.Lorentz invariance is the basis of Special Relativity and is thought to be an exact symmetry of nature. It is a feature of both the Standard Model of particle physics and General Relativity. Consequently, any violation of this basic principle would be a signal of new physics. Moreover, attempts to unify the Standard Model and General Relativity suggest Lorentz invariance might be slightly broken at low energies. The research of Professor Mewes focuses on the theoretical description of Lorentz-symmetry breaking and the identification of possible experimental signatures. The goal of this project is to extend existing theory to include a very broad class of Lorentz-invariance violations. To date, most studies of Lorentz violation have focused on the simplest minimal violations. This project aims to understand the theoretical and experimental significance of more general nonminimal violations. Research in this area advances the national interest by promoting the progress of science in one of its most fundamental directions: the discovery and understanding of new physical law. Moreover, parts of this work will be accessible to undergraduates and will provide research opportunities for physics majors at Cal Poly, a primarily undergraduate institution. Students involved in this research will gain valuable exposure to theoretical physics.In more technical terms, this project seeks to fill in several major gaps in the theoretical framework known as the Standard-Model-Extension (SME). The SME aims to provide a general description of Lorentz violation in any system. The generality of the approach implies that the full SME contains an infinite number of violations. To keep the problem tractable, most studies have focused on the minimal SME, which restricts attention to operators of renormalizable mass dimension. However, there are reasons to suspect that nonrenormalizable violations may dominate. Recent studies have systematically examined nonrenormalizable violations in photons and free fermions. This project will build on this work by studying violations in gauge interactions between photons and fermions. It will also extend our understanding of potential violations in gravity by considering higher-order nonminimal violations in General Relativity.