1. Local conformal symmetry in non-Riemannian geometry and the origin of physical scales.
- Author
-
de Cesare, Marco, Moffat, John W., and Sakellariadou, Mairi
- Subjects
- *
CONFORMAL geometry , *CONFORMAL field theory , *MINKOWSKI geometry , *TENSOR fields , *MATHEMATICAL functions - Abstract
We introduce an extension of the StandardModel and General Relativity built upon the principle of local conformal invariance, which represents a generalization of a previous work by Bars, Steinhardt and Turok. This is naturally realized by adopting as a geometric framework a particular class of non-Riemannian geometries, first studied by Weyl. The gravitational sector is enriched by a scalar and a vector field. The latter has a geometric origin and represents the novel feature of our approach. We argue that physical scales could emerge from a theory with no dimensionful parameters, as a result of the spontaneous breakdown of conformal and electroweak symmetries.We study the dynamics of matter fields in this modified gravity theory and show that test particles followgeodesics of the Levi-Civita connection, thus resolving an old criticism raised by Einstein against Weyl's original proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF