2020/05/31 by Mark P. Hertzberg, Jacob A. Litterer · 1 citation
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #CPT symmetry #Charge (physics) #Charge conservation #Classical electromagnetism #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Degrees of freedom (physics and chemistry) #Electromagnetism #Geometry #Gravitation #Homogeneous space #Invariant (physics) #Locality #Lorentz covariance #Lorentz transformation #Massless particle #Mathematics #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Photon #Physics #Quantum #Quantum entanglement #Quantum mechanics #Quantum nonlocality #Symmetry (geometry) #Theoretical physics #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.102.025022
published as Phys. Rev. D 102, 025022 (2020) · 7 pages in double column format. V2: Further clarifications. Updated towards version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D. V3: Update to journal title format
openalex publication_date 2020/07/30 · arxiv created 2020/08/11 · arxiv updated 2020/08/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
It is well known that a theory of the (i) Lorentz invariant and (ii) locally interacting (iii) two degrees of freedom of a massless spin 1 particle, the photon, leads uniquely to electromagnetism at large distances. In this work, we remove the assumption of (i) Lorentz boost invariance, but we still demand (ii) and (iii). We consider several broad classes of theories of spin 1, which in general explicitly violate Lorentz symmetry. We restrict to the familiar two degrees of freedom of the photon. We find that most theories lead to nonlocality and instantaneous signaling at a distance. By demanding a mild form of locality (ii), namely that the tree-level exchange action is manifestly local, we find that the photon must still be sourced by a conserved charge with an associated internal symmetry. This recovers the central features of electromagnetism, although it does not by itself impose Lorentz boost symmetry. The case of gravitation dramatically improves the final conclusion and is reported in detail in our accompanying paper Part 2.