论文标题

一般协方差的离散类似物 - 第1部分:世界是否从根本上设定在格子上?

A Discrete Analog of General Covariance -- Part 1: Could the world be fundamentally set on a lattice?

论文作者

Grimmer, Daniel

论文摘要

一般相对历史上的关键步骤是爱因斯坦采用了一般协方差原则,该原则要求为我们的时空理论进行协调独立的配方。一般协方差有助于我们将理论的实质性内容从仅仅代表性的文物中解脱出来。它是对时空理论的现代理解必不可少的工具。受量子重力的驱动,人们可能希望将这些概念扩展到量子时空理论(无论是什么)。相关的是,人们可能希望将这些概念扩展到离散的时空理论(即晶格理论)。本文提供了这样的扩展,并带来令人惊讶的后果。 关于离散时空理论的第一个直觉可能是他们引入了大量固定背景结构(即晶格),从而将我们的理论可能的对称性限制在保留这种固定结构(即离散对称性)的那些理论的对称性。但是,正如我将要讨论的那样,这些直觉是双重错误和过度的。离散的时空理论可以而且确实具有连续的翻译和旋转对称性。此外,完全相同的理论可以得到多种晶格结构,甚至可以完全没有晶格描述。正如我对一般协方差的离散类似物将揭示:晶格结构不像固定的背景结构或基础歧管的一部分,更像是坐标系,即仅仅是代表性伪影。因此,世界上不能“从根本上设置在平方晶格上”(或任何其他晶格),而不是“从根本上设置在某个坐标系统中”。像坐标系统一样,晶格结构不是那种可以是基本的东西。它们都是完全代表性的。空间不能离散(即使可能是这样表示的)。

A crucial step in the history of General Relativity was Einstein's adoption of the principle of general covariance which demands a coordinate independent formulation for our spacetime theories. General covariance helps us to disentangle a theory's substantive content from its merely representational artifacts. It is an indispensable tool for a modern understanding of spacetime theories. Motivated by quantum gravity, one may wish to extend these notions to quantum spacetime theories (whatever those are). Relatedly, one might want to extend these notions to discrete spacetime theories (i.e., lattice theories). This paper delivers such an extension with surprising consequences. One's first intuition regarding discrete spacetime theories may be that they introduce a great deal of fixed background structure (i.e., a lattice) and thereby limit our theory's possible symmetries down to those which preserve this fixed structure (i.e., discrete symmetries). However, as I will discuss, these intuitions are doubly wrong and overhasty. Discrete spacetime theories can and do have continuous translation and rotation symmetries. Moreover, the exact same theory can be given a wide variety of lattice structures and can even be described with no lattice at all. As my discrete analog of general covariance will reveal: lattice structure is rather less like a fixed background structure or part of an underlying manifold and rather more like a coordinate system, i.e., merely a representational artifact. Thus, the world cannot be "fundamentally set on a square lattice" (or any other lattice) any more than it could be "fundamentally set in a certain coordinate system". Like coordinate systems, lattice structures are just not the sort of thing that can be fundamental; they are both thoroughly representational. Spacetime cannot be discrete (even when it might be representable as such).

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