2012/10/04 by Silas R. Beane, Zohreh Davoudi, Martin J. Savage · 4 voices · 53 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #COSMIC cancer database #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Lattice (music) #Lattice QCD #Lattice field theory #Observable #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Quantum chromodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Statistical physics #Theoretical physics #Universe #astro-ph.HE #hep-lat #hep-ph #hep-th #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1140/epja/i2014-14148-0
published in The European Physical Journal A 50(9) (Springer Science+Business Media) · 14 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2012/11/09 · openalex publication_date 2014/09/01 · arxiv updated 2015/08/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Observable consequences of the hypothesis that the observed universe is a numerical simulation performed on a cubic space-time lattice or grid are explored. The simulation scenario is first motivated by extrapolating current trends in computational resource requirements for lattice QCD into the future. Using the historical development of lattice gauge theory technology as a guide, we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable consequences. Among the observables that are considered are the muon g-2 and the current differences between determinations of alpha, but the most stringent bound on the inverse lattice spacing of the universe, b^(-1) >~ 10^(11) GeV, is derived from the high-energy cut off of the cosmic ray spectrum. The numerical simulation scenario could reveal itself in the distributions of the highest energy cosmic rays exhibiting a degree of rotational symmetry breaking that reflects the structure of the underlying lattice.