Spontaneous Breaking of Lorentz Invariance

2003/11/30 by Alejandro Jenkins
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-th #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.69.105007

published as Phys.Rev. D69 (2004) 105007 · revtex4, 11 pages, 5 figures; v2:references added; v3:more references added, typos fixed, some points in sect. IV clarified; v4:even more references added, discussion in sect. V extended; v5:replaced to match published version (minor corrections of form)

arxiv created 2004/05/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01

Abstract

We describe how a stable effective theory in which particles of the same fermion number attract may spontaneously break Lorentz invariance by giving non-zero fermion number density to the vacuum (and therefore dynamically generating a chemical potential term). This mecanism yields a finite vacuum expectation value <ψγ^μψ> which we consider in the context of proposed models that require such a breaking of Lorentz invariance in order to yield composite degrees of freedom that act approximately like gauge bosons. We also make general remarks about how the background source provided by <ψγ^μψ> could relate to work on signals of Lorentz violation in electrodynamics.

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