1. Introduction: Born’s Reciprocal Relativity Theory
Most of the work devoted to quantum gravity has been focused on the geometry of spacetime rather than phase space per se. The first indication that phase space should play a role in quantum gravity was raised by [
1]. The principle behind Born’s reciprocal relativity theory [
2,
3,
4,
5] was based on the idea proposed long ago by [
1] that coordinates and momenta should be unified on the same footing. Consequently, if there is a limiting speed (temporal derivative of the position coordinates) in nature, there should be a maximal force as well, since force is the temporal derivative of the momentum. The principle of maximal acceleration was advocated earlier on by [
6,
7,
8,
9]. A
maximal speed limit (speed of light) must be accompanied with a
maximal proper force (which is also compatible with a
maximal and
minimal length duality) [
5,
10].
We explored in [
5,
10] some novel consequences of Born’s reciprocal relativity theory in a flat phase space and generalized the theory to the curved spacetime scenario. We provided, in particular, some specific results from Born’s reciprocal relativity which are
present in special relativity. These are: a momentum-dependent time delay in the emission and detection of photons; the relativity of chronology; an energy-dependent notion of locality; a superluminal behavior; the relative rotation of photon trajectories due to the aberration of light; the invariance of area cells in the phase space; and modified dispersion relations.
The generalized velocity and force (acceleration) boosts (rotations) transformations of the
flat 8D phase-space coordinates, where
are
c-valued (classical) variables which are
all boosted (rotated) into each other, were given by [
2,
3,
4] based on the group
, which is the Born version of the Lorentz group
. The
group transformations leave invariant the symplectic two-form
and also the following Born–Green line interval in the
8D phase space
The maximal proper force is set to be given by
b. The rotations, velocity, and force (acceleration) boosts leaving invariant the symplectic two-form and the line interval in the 8D phase space are rather elaborate; see [
2,
3,
4] for details.
These transformations can be simplified drastically when the velocity and force (acceleration) boosts are both parallel to the
x-direction and leave the transverse directions
intact. There is now a subgroup
which leaves invariant the following line interval
where one has factored out the proper time infinitesimal
in (
2). The proper force interval
is “spacelike" when the proper velocity interval
is timelike. The analog of the Lorentz relativistic factor in Equation (
2) involves the ratios of two proper
forces.
One may set the maximal proper force acting on a fundamental particle of Planck mass to be given by , where is the Planck mass and is the postulated minimal Planck length. Invoking a minimal/maximal length duality, one can also set , where is the Hubble scale and is the observable mass of the universe. Equating both expressions for b leads to . The value of b may also be interpreted as the maximal string tension.
The
group transformation laws of the phase-space coordinates
which leave the interval (
2) invariant are [
2,
3,
4]
where
is the velocity-boost rapidity parameter,
is the force (acceleration) boost rapidity parameter, and
is the net effective rapidity parameter of the primed-reference frame. These parameters
are defined, respectively, in terms of the velocity
and force
(related to acceleration) as
The
generators
are comprised of the 6 ordinary Lorentz generators
and 10 force (acceleration) boost/rotation generators
, giving a total of 16 generators.
It is straightforward to verify that the transformations (4a,b) leave invariant the phase-space interval
but
do not leave separately invariant the proper time interval
, nor the interval in energy–momentum space
. Only the
combination
is truly left invariant under force (acceleration) boosts (4a,b). They also leave invariant the symplectic two-form (phase-space areas)
.
Some readers might note that the
algebra is usually not used in standard formulations of particle kinematics and as symmetries in the dynamical, mechanical, and field-theoretic models. For instance, Kalman [
11] long ago studied the
group (and its discrete representations) as a dynamical group for hadrons. By a dynamical group, one means in general (a noncompact one) which gives the actual energy or mass spectrum of a quantum mechanical system [
12].
Low [
2,
3,
4] has explained in great detail that since
is noncompact, the
infinite-dimension unitary representations contain discrete series that may be decomposed into
infinite ladders where the rungs are finite dimensional irreducible unitary
representations. In particular, the rest and null frames yield the groups
, and
that appear in the Standard Model, and which is very appealing. If one has a single particle state, under force-boosts (acceleration) transformations, one would expect to transform it into a compound state that decomposes into a sum of single particle states representing the particle interactions of nonuniform velocity frames of reference.
Low [
2,
3,
4] has argued that one could think of the timelike states as the rungs of the ladder and Poincare transformations transform these rungs into themselves with
no mixing of states that are on
different rungs; likewise with the null states. There are no Poincare transformations that take timelike states into null states. However, when one considers noninertial frames the states in different rungs of the ladder can transform into each other, and timelike and null states can mix. The reason is that due to the nonzero rates of change of the momentum, one expects the dynamical symmetry to describe transitions between these states when viewed from the interacting frames.
One should also add that these arguments presented by [
2,
3,
4] bear a resemblance to the Unruh effect (the Fulling–Davies–Unruh effect) [
13] which is a kinematic prediction of quantum field theory that an
accelerating observer will observe a thermal bath, such as a blackbody radiation, whereas an inertial observer would observe none. In other words, the background appears to be warm from an accelerating reference frame. Heuristically, for a uniformly accelerating observer, the ground state of an inertial observer is seen as a
mixed state in thermodynamic equilibrium with a nonzero temperature bath of thermal photons and whose temperature is proportional to the acceleration.
Low [
2,
3,
4] also constructed the eigenvalue equations for the representation of the set of Casimir invariant operators which define the field equations of the system. The applications of the
deformed quaplectic algebras studied in this work, in particular corresponding to the
deformed Heisenberg algebras, to theoretical physics models remain to be studied, and in particular, within the context of quantum field theories in noncommutative spacetimes. This is beyond the scope of this work.
After this brief introduction of Born’s reciprocal relativity theory, in
Section 2 we review the construction of the
deformed quaplectic group that is given by the semidirect product of
with the
deformed (noncommutative) Weyl–Heisenberg group corresponding to
noncommutative fiber coordinates and momenta
;
. This construction leads at the end of
Section 2 to more general algebras given by a two-parameter family of deformations of the quaplectic algebra and to local gauge theories of gravity based on the latter deformed quaplectic algebras.
We continue in
Section 2 by examining the algebraic extensions of the Yang algebra in extended noncommutative phase spaces and compare them with the extensions of the deformed quaplectic algebra involving antisymmetric tensor coordinates and momenta of higher ranks
;
.
In
Section 2, a solution is found for the exact analytical mapping of the noncommuting
operator variables (associated with an 8D curved phase space) to the canonical
operator variables of a flat 12D phase space. We explore the geometrical implications of this mapping which provides, in the
classical limit, the embedding functions
of an 8D curved phase space into a flat 12D phase-space background. The latter embedding functions determine the functional forms of the base spacetime metric
, the fiber metric of the vertical space
, and the nonlinear connection
associated with the 8D cotangent space of the 4D spacetime. We finalize with some concluding remarks.
2. The Deformed Quaplectic Group and Complex Gravity
To begin this section we review the construction of the
deformed quaplectic group given by the semidirect product of
with the deformed (noncommutative) Weyl–Heisenberg group involving noncommutative coordinates and momenta [
14]. Then, we proceed to construct a two-parameter family of deformed quaplectic algebras parametrized by two complex coefficients
.
The (undeformed) quaplectic group is given by the semidirect product of
with the Weyl–Heisenberg group and was studied in detail by [
2,
3,
4]. Physically, the quaplectic group is basically the “phase-space” version of the Poincare group (which is given by the semidirect product of the Lorenz group
with the translation group
), where the translation group is replaced by the Weyl–Heisenberg group and the Lorentz group is replaced by
.
The deformed Weyl–Heisenberg algebra involves the generators
Notice that we must
not confuse the
generators (associated with the fiber coordinates of the internal space of the fiber bundle) with the ordinary base spacetime coordinates and momenta
. The local gauge theory based on the deformed quaplectic algebra was constructed in the fiber bundle over the base manifold which is a 4D curved spacetime with
coordinates
[
14]. The (deformed) quaplectic group acts as the automorphism group along the internal fiber coordinates. Therefore, we must
not confuse the
deformed complex gravitational theory constructed in [
14] with the noncommutative gravity work in the literature where the spacetime coordinates
are not commuting.
The four fundamental length, momentum, temporal, and energy scales are, respectively,
where
b is the
maximal proper force associated with the Born’s reciprocal relativity theory. In the natural units
, all four scales become
unity. The gravitational coupling is given by
and the four scales then coincide with the Planck length, momentum, time, and energy, respectively. One may postulate the maximal proper force to be given by
where
is the Planck scale, the Planck mass
is assumed to be the
maximal mass of a
fundamental particle, and
is postulated to be its
maximal proper acceleration. In natural units
,
.
The generators of the
algebra given by
are Hermitian
, with
; while the generators of the
deformed Weyl–Heisenberg algebra
are Hermitian-conjugate pairs like
in the
algebra. Note that the Hermitian-conjugate pairs of generators
in Equation (
7) are not independent from each other, hence one is
not doubling the number of physical dimensions. For instance, the complex variables
are not independent but complex-conjugate pairs. The number of physical dimensions of the 2D phase space remains the same.
The standard quaplectic group [
2,
3,
4] is given by the semidirect product of the
group and the unmodified Weyl–Heisenberg
group
and is defined in terms of the generators
described below with
.
A careful analysis reveals that the generators
(comprised of Hermitian
anti-Hermitian pieces) of the
deformed Weyl–Heisenberg algebra can be defined in terms of judicious linear combinations of the Hermitian
algebra generators
, where
;
and
. The linear combination is defined after introducing the following
complex-valued coefficients as follows:
The reason behind this particular choice of the complex coefficients appearing in Equation (
11) is explained below in Equation (20a–c). The Hermitian generators of the
algebra are given by
and
; notice that the position of the indices is very relevant because
. The commutators are
and
.... such that now,
no longer commutes with
. The generators
of the
algebra can be decomposed into the Lorentz subalgebra generators
and the “shearlike” generators
as
where the “shearlike” generators
and the Lorentz generators
are Hermitian. The explicit commutation relations of the
generators are given by
Therefore, given
after straightforward algebra, it leads to the
commutators
as expected. By extension, the
commutators are
1The commutators of the Lorentz boosts generators
with the
generators are
The Hermitian
generators are the “reciprocal” boosts/rotation transformations which
exchange X for
P, in addition to boosting (rotating) those variables, and one ends up with the commutators of
with the
generators given by
The commutators in Equation (
14d) and the definitions in Equation (
11) lead to
which are consistent with the commutators in Equation (14a–c) and the definitions in Equations (
11) and (
13). The right-hand side of Equation (
17) can be rewritten in terms of
after the following replacements:
After some algebra one finds
The particular
choice of the complex coefficients appearing in Equation (
11) leads to the following
deformed Weyl–Heisenberg algebra
leading to
and the metric
is used to raise and lower indices. The Planck constant is given in terms of the length and momentum scales of Equation (
8) as
. In
units,
.
The deformed quaplectic algebra is given explicitly by Equations (
14d), (
17), (
19), and (20a–c) and obeys the Jacobi identities by virtue of the definitions in Equations (
11) and (
13). After recurring directly to the definitions in Equation (
7), one finds that Equation (
20a) explicitly reflects the
deformation of the Weyl–Heisenberg algebra resulting from the noncommutative algebra of coordinates and momenta given by
One could interpret the term
as a matrix-valued Planck constant
(in units of
). One may also note that the generator
no longer commutes with
, but it
exchanges them, as one can see from Equation (20b) resulting from the definition of
given by
.
One of the salient features of the construction of the deformed quaplectic (Weyl–Heisenberg) algebra is that by varying the values of the following complex coefficients
appearing in the linear combinations
it furnishes different commutation relations than the ones described by Equations (20a–c) and (21a,b). The latter commutators are found in the special case when
, as chosen in Equation (
11). For instance, if either
or
it leads instead to vanishing commutators
as a result of Equation (14e). In turn, one would have
instead of Equations (21a,b). Therefore, the introduction of nonvanishing complex coefficients
, via Equation (
22), yields a two-parameter family of deformed fiber coordinates and momenta algebras parametrized by
. In particular, one may explicitly introduce these parameters by writing
.
After introducing the complex-valued vierbein
, it leads to the complex metric
with
The
complex metric
is Hermitian
as a result of
. To verify that
, one just needs to relabel the indices
in Equation (
23b) and recur to
.
The two-parameter family of
-valued Hermitian gauge fields is given by
where
L is a length scale that is introduced for dimensional reasons since the physical units of
are
.
is given by
, and
are displayed in Equation (
22).
One can rewrite the two-parameter family of
-valued Hermitian gauge fields (
24) as
After some straightforward algebra, one finds that the real-valued connection components
are given by suitable linear combinations of the
components of the complex-valued vierbein as follows
such that
Because
, one finds that
; consequently,
. Therefore, the introduction of the two distinct complex coefficients
is tantamount to choosing an infinite family of real-valued connection components
given by the many different linear combinations of
and
. The real-valued coefficients of these linear combinations are given by the real and imaginary parts of
and
as displayed in Equation (26a). One should also emphasize that
zero torsion conditions were imposed in reaching the relations in Equation (26a,b) between
and
.
The Hermitian
-valued field strength is defined by
from which one can read the curvature components
, and the other components of the field strength (such as torsion), in terms of the connection components (and their derivatives) of Equation (
24) from the following decomposition of the field strength
By proceeding as one did in [
14], one may then construct the generalized actions for complex gravity after using the complex metric (vierbein) and its inverse to raise and lower indices. The simplest actions can have terms linear and quadratic in the curvature and also quadratic terms in the torsion. For further details, we refer to [
14].
Alternatively, one could instead start with the
-valued Hermitian gauge field in Equation (
25) leading to the field strength
and expressed in terms of
, and their derivatives. Note that
has 25 generators, whereas the metric affine group in 4D, given by the semidirect product of
with the translation group
, has 20 generators. Therefore, the complex gravitational theory based on
and inspired from Born’s reciprocal relativity theory, has more degrees of freedom than the metric affine theory of gravity in 4D. This is not surprising since one is dealing with gravity in curved phase spaces. There is also torsion in our construction.
A curved phase-space action associated with the geometry of the cotangent bundle of spacetime and based on Lagrange–Finsler and Hamilton–Cartan geometry [
15,
16,
17,
18] can be found in [
19,
20,
21]. To conclude this section, there are two different approaches to construct generalized gravitational theories in curved phase spaces: (i) via the
local gauge theory construction presented here, or (ii) via Finsler’s geometric methods.
3. The Yang Algebra versus the Deformed Quaplectic Algebra
This section is devoted to an extensive analysis of the Yang and the deformed quaplectic algebras associated with noncommutative phase spaces. Secondly, we present extensions of such algebras involving antisymmetric tensor coordinates and momenta of different ranks.
3.1. The Yang Algebra and Its Extension via Generalized Angular Momentum Operators in Higher Dimensions
Given a flat 6D spacetime with coordinates
and a metric
2, the Yang algebra [
22,
23], which is an extension of the Snyder algebra [
24], can be derived in terms of the
Lorentz algebra generators described by the angular momentum/boost operators
3
where
is the canonical conjugate momentum variable to
. Their commutators are
The coordinates
commute. The momenta
also commute, and the canonical conjugate variables
obey the Weyl–Heisenberg algebra in 6D.
Adopting the units
, the correspondence among the noncommuting 4D spacetime coordinates
, the noncommuting momenta
, and the Lorentz
algebra generators leading to the Yang algebra [
22,
23] is given by
which requires the introduction of an ultraviolet cutoff scale
given by the Planck scale, and an infrared cutoff scale
that can be set equal to the Hubble scale
(which determines the cosmological constant). It is very important to emphasize that despite the introduction of two length scales
, the Lorentz symmetry is not lost. This is one of the most salient features of the Snyder [
24] and Yang [
22,
23] algebras
4.
The other generators are given by
One can then verify that the Yang algebra is recovered after imposing the correspondence in Equations (32a,b) and (
33)
where the
commutators are the same as in the
Lorentz algebra in 4D. They are of the form
The generators are assigned to be Hermitian so there are
i factors in the right-hand side of Equation (
39) since the commutator of two Hermitian operators is anti-Hermitian. The 4D spacetime metric is
.
Before continuing, it is important to point out the differences/similarities between the
algebra and the Yang algebra which is based on
(or
). Firstly,
has 25 generators while
has 15. Secondly, the modified Weyl–Heisenberg algebra in Equation (
37)
differs from the one displayed by Equation (
21a). Equation (
34) is similar to Equation (
21b); Equation (
38) is similar to Equation (
20c); and Equations (
35) and (
36) are trivially similar to Equation (
15). Thirdly, there is
no analog in the Yang algebra of the Hermitian
generators which act as the “reciprocal” boosts/rotation transformations which
exchange X for
P, in addition to boosting (rotating) those variables, and leading to the commutators of
with the
generators given by Equation (
16).
Another difference between the Yang and the deformed quaplectic algebra is that in the Yang algebra case, one adds two additional coordinates and momenta and in order to construct the algebras with 15 generators. Whereas in the (deformed) quaplectic algebra case, one adds one additional coordinate and momentum , and the extra generators in order to construct the algebra with 25 generators. Furthermore, the construction of the Yang algebra requires the two length scales , whereas in the (deformed) quaplectic algebra, one has the length scale and the momentum scale .
One may also clarify that quantum phase spaces can be described by real or complex phase space coordinates. A typical example of the use of complex coordinates is in the description of the coherent state
that is defined to be the unique eigenstate of the (bosonic) annihilation operator
[
25]. The formal solution of this eigenvalue equation is the vacuum state displaced to a location
z in phase space, and it is obtained by letting the unitary displacement operator
operate on the vacuum
, where the annihilation operator
and creation operator
are expressed in terms of the phase-space coordinates associated with the quantum harmonic oscillator.
Using the representation of the coherent state in the basis of Fock states, one finds
, where
are the energy (number) eigenvectors of the quantum harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian
[
25].
Pertaining the role of the symmetry, one should point that there is a standard procedure to obtain the generators in terms of the complex algebra generators via the creation and annihilation fermionic oscillators defined as follows: ; ; . One can verify that the following anticommutators lead to the commutation relations . This construction is just a reflection of the fact that . In particular, .
After this detour, given the above correspondence (
9), we can
extend it further to the higher-grade polyvector-valued coordinates and momenta operators in noncommutative Clifford phase spaces [
26,
27]. Given a Clifford algebra
, a polyvector-valued coordinate is defined as
and admits the following expansion in terms of the Clifford algebra generators in
D-dimensions,
, as follows:
The numerical combinatorial factors can be omitted by imposing the ordering prescription
. In order to match physical units in each term of (17), a length scale parameter must be suitably introduced in the expansion in Equation (17). In [
28,
29], we introduced the Planck scale as the expansion parameter in (17), which was set to unity, when one adopted the units
.
Similarly, the polyvector-valued momentum
admits the following expansion in terms of the Clifford algebra generators in
D-dimensions
The scalar, vectorial, antisymmetric tensorial coordinates are the scalar, vector, bivector, trivector, etc., components of the polyvector-valued coordinates. The bivector (antisymmetric tensor of rank two) corresponds to an oriented area element. The trivector (antisymmetric tensor of rank three) corresponds to an oriented volume element, and so forth.
Similarly, the scalar, vectorial, antisymmetric tensorial coordinates are the scalar, vector, bivector, trivector, etc., components of the polyvector-valued momentum coordinates. The bivector (antisymmetric tensor of rank two) corresponds to an oriented areal-momentum element. The trivector (antisymmetric tensor of rank three) corresponds to an oriented volume–momentum element, and so forth.
We constructed in [
26,
27] the corresponding nonvanishing commutators among the
noncommutative antisymmetric tensors
;
of different ranks. We coined such
extension of the Yang algebra the Clifford–Yang algebra, since it involves polyvector-valued coordinates and momenta associated with a Clifford algebra. The
noncommuting bivector coordinates obey
is a bivector coordinate associated with the
algebra of the 6D flat spacetime.
is the corresponding bivector canonical momentum conjugate. Their commutators are
where the generalized metric involving bivector indices is defined as
The
noncommuting bivector momenta obey
and so forth. All the commutators have the same structural form of a generalized angular momentum algebra as follows
where the grades of the polyvector indices
, and
appearing in the generators are
, and
, respectively. The shorthand notation for
is
. The generalized metric tensor
if the grade of
A is
equal to the grade of
C. Similarly,
if the grade of
A is
not equal to the grade of
. Moreover,
since the 6D metric is diagonal. The commutators (41e) ensure that the Jacobi identities are satisfied. In addition, we found the spectrum of the quantum harmonic oscillator in noncommutative spaces in terms of the eigenvalues of the generalized angular momentum operators in higher dimensions and discussed how to extend these results to higher-grade polyvector-valued coordinates and momenta. For full details, we refer the reader to [
26,
27].
3.2. Realization of the Deformed Quaplectic Algebra and its Extensions
We saw above how the
noncommutative coordinates and momenta of the Yang algebra in 4D can be realized in terms of the angular momentum operators in 6D, which, in turn, are expressed in terms of the canonical-conjugate variables
in 6D shown in Equations (32a,b) and (33) and obeying the standard commutation relations displayed in Equations (31). Inspired by this procedure, next, we find a realization of the
deformed quaplectic algebra generators in terms of the canonical coordinate and momentum variables
as follows:
From Equations (41a–e) and (42a–d), one then finds an explicit realization of the generators
of the deformed quaplectic algebra, with
, directly in terms of the canonical coordinate and momentum variables
, and obeying the following commutation relations:
From Equation (43a,b), one learns that when
, the generator
reduces to
, and when
,
, while the generator
. Similarly,
reduces to
,
, and
.
The antisymmetric rank-two tensor coordinates and momenta operators’ extensions of the expressions in Equations (41a–e) and (42a–d) are given by:
where
Given
the generalization of the operator
is
The generalization of the commutators in Equations (14a–c) corresponding to the
generators is given by
where
From Equations (45c) and (46)–(49), one finds that
This is a result of the canonical antisymmetric rank-two tensor coordinates and momenta variables
obeying the following commutation relations (the generalization of Equation (43a,b)
The other
dimensionless generators are
5
such that
and leading to the following generators
where
are suitable complex-valued coefficients chosen so that
6 Finally, from Equations (55a,b)–(57), one arrives at the desired result
The above construction can be
extended to higher-rank antisymmetric tensor coordinates and momenta
leading to the generators
, and whose commutators are the extensions of the equations above. The end result is
where
can be written as the determinant of the
matrix whose entries are
with
. The same occurs with
where the entries are
. One finds that Equations (60) and (61a,b) do not differ too much from those corresponding equations of the Clifford–Yang algebra [
26,
27]. In the latter algebra,
is replaced by
; there are no
terms, and
are replaced by
, respectively, where
are the lower and upper length scales.
To sum up, all the commutation relations can be obtained from
We finalize this section by pointing out that Meljanac and collaborators introduced also the tensorial canonical Heisenberg algebras as a tool to provide the solution, e.g., of the Snyder models describing noncommutative quantum spacetime coordinates. In particular, the Yang model and its generalizations were discussed very recently [
30].
4. Curved Phase Space Due to Noncommutative Coordinates and Momenta
Noncommuting momentum operators are a reflection of the spacetime curvature after invoking the QM prescription . By Born’s reciprocity, noncommuting coordinates are a reflection of the momentum space curvature after invoking , where the tilde derivatives represent derivatives with respect to the momentum variables.
Having reviewed the basics of the Yang algebra of noncommutative phase spaces, Born’s reciprocal relativity, and the extended Yang and (deformed) quaplectic algebras, in this section, we provide a solution for the exact analytical mapping of the noncommuting operator variables (associated to an 8D curved phase space) into the canonical operator variables of a flat 12D phase space. We explore the geometrical implications of this mapping which provides, in the classical limit, the embedding functions of an 8D curved phase space into a flat 12D phase space background. The latter embedding functions determine the functional forms of the base spacetime metric , the fiber metric of the vertical space , and the nonlinear connection associated with the 8D cotangent space of the 4D spacetime.
Instead of working with the above
canonical coordinates
and momenta
in a flat 12D phase space (
, the authors [
31] were interested in finding Hermitian realizations of the above Yang algebra in an 8D phase space, and given in terms of the
canonical variables
satisfying
, and
, with
.
The Yang model studied by [
31] was characterized by the choice of the commutator
, and where the rank-two tensor
is of the form
with
h a judicious function of the Lorentz scalars
, which is determined by solving the Jacobi identities. The rank-two tensor
is what leads to the generalized uncertainty relations. The triple special relativity model [
32], an extension of [
33,
34], was characterized by a different choice of
. The Lorentz generators were represented as
In particular, the authors [
31] looked for representations where the generators
and the tensor
could be written in terms of the canonical variables
and
. This required the arduous task of finding the nontrivial map among the
noncanonical variables
and the canonical ones
:
. The map was found iteratively in powers of
. The explicit technical details of this map can be found in [
31].
4.1. Mapping of to the Variables in Flat Phase Space
The
, and
canonical coordinates and momenta (operators) in the flat 12D phase space are scalars from the point of view of the 8D curved phase space parametrized by the noncanonical coordinates
and momenta
. Therefore,
, and
must be functions of the Lorentz scalars
Setting
, due to the Born reciprocity principle, one must have functions
of the arguments
, and
given by the following combination of Hermitian variables (operators)
The arguments
, and
are invariant under
,
, and
, if one wishes to implement Born’s reciprocity symmetry. Therefore, one must have functions of the form
For instance, one could have functions linear in
, and
defined as follows
where
(
) are judicious numerical (dimensionful) coefficients. The units of the coefficients in Equations (68a,b) are those of length, while those in Equations (68c,d) are those of mass. Note that the
coefficients in Equations (68a–e) are complex-valued:
. The reason is that the combination
ensures that Equation (68e) is Hermitian by construction. Equation (68e) is also invariant under Born’s reciprocity
and
. We show that Equations (68a–e) should, in principle, provide satisfactory solutions to the embedding problem defined below.
The
commutator is defined as
where
is a second-rank tensor, not necessarily symmetric, that we refrain from identifying as a metric tensor. The above commutator can also be expressed in terms of the 6D angular momenta variables displayed by Equations (32a,b) and (33) as
Therefore, from Equations (69) and (70), one arrives at the following relation, after contracting both equations with
,
Therefore, in this particular case, one finds that the tensor is symmetric
and such that the conformal factor
is Hermitian and given by the left-hand side of Equation (71). The right-hand side of (71) is Hermitian because
is Hermitian due to the canonical and Hermiticity nature of the 6D variables:
, and
resulting from the commutators of the 6D canonical variables given by Equation (31).
From Equations (32a,b), one learns that the 4D operators
admitted a 6D angular momentum realization of the form
From Equations (72) and (73), one can deduce the relation
where
and
are given by Equation (33) explicitly in terms of the 6D canonical variables
.
One can
invert the relations in Equations (72) and (73) as follows. After multiplying Equations (72) and (73) on the
right by
and
, respectively, and subtracting the top equation from the bottom one, it yields
due to the canonical nature of the 6D variables
and
described by the commutators in Equation (31) and which allows us to reorder the relevant factors due to the commutativity.
Moreover, multiplying Equations (72) and (73) on the
right by
and
, respectively, and subtracting the top equation from the bottom one yield
Next, we see that the functional forms of , and provided by Equations (68a–e) lead to solutions to Equation (71), which, in turn, yields automatically the solutions to Equation (75a,b). In doing so, one finds the solutions to the embedding problem , with , where . The operator appearing in the right-hand side of Equation (75a,b) can be moved to the left-hand side via the inverse operator, and that can be defined as a formal power series as follows: .
Thus, from Equations (71) and (75a,b) one can then construct the maps from the
noncanonical (operator) variables in 4D to the canonical (operator) variables
in 6D. After a laborious but straightforward procedure we find the following family of solutions
where
and
, and
are three arbitrary parameters. This is due to the nonlinearity of the equations that one is solving. These solutions (76a–d) have the form
such that
as required by Equation (71).
When one takes the classical limit, upon restoring ℏ which was set to unity in the terms of Equations (68e), in order to match units, one can see that these terms are singular in the limit, whereas the terms are well-behaved and yield constants.
For these reasons, we just adhere to the following prescription when finding the
classical limit of the embedding functions
. We could simply drop the
singular terms in Equation (76a–d) by setting the arbitrary constant
to zero
and set the
terms to constants that can be reabsorbed into a redefinition of the
parameter in the explicit solutions for
, and
given by Equation (76a–d). In doing so, one ends up with the following expressions in the
classical limit
To conclude, one can finally obtain the explicit solutions for
, in the classical limit, given in terms of the functions
, and
in Equation (77a–d) (and
) as follows:
where
,
. Next, we study the geometrical implications of the (classical) embedding solutions found in this section and provided by Equations (77a–d) and (78a,b).
4.2. Embedding an 8D Curved Phase Space into a 12D Flat Phase Space
The previous section involved the use of coordinates and momenta
operators. In this section, we shall deal with
classical variables (
c-numbers)
. A more rigorous notation in the previous section would have been to assign “hats” to operators
. For the sake of simplicity, we avoided it. The geometry of the cotangent bundle of spacetime (phase space) can be best-explored within the context of Lagrange–Finsler, Hamilton–Cartan geometry [
15,
16,
17,
18]. The line element in the 8D curved phase space is
where
are the base spacetime and internal space metrics, respectively, with
,
, and
is the nonlinear connection.
One should note that the metric tensor is not the vertical Hessian of the square of a Finsler function, and is not the inverse of . represents, physically, the cotangent bundle’s internal-space metric tensor which is independent from the base-spacetime metric tensor . The number of total components of is ).
The generalized (vacuum) gravitational field equations associated with the geometry of the 8D cotangent bundle differ considerably from the standard (vacuum) Einstein field equations in 8D based on Riemannian geometry. Thus, for instance, by using a base-spacetime metric to be independent from the internal-space metric and a nonlinear connection , it might avoid the reduction of the solutions of the generalized gravitational field equations to the standard Schwarzschild (Tangherlini) solutions when radial symmetry is imposed.
For example, in [
19] we further studied a scalar-gravity model in curved phase spaces proposed by [
20,
21]. After a very laborious procedure, the variation of the action
S with respect to the fundamental fields
led to very
complicated field equations which differed considerably from the Einstein field equations. Exact nontrivial analytical solutions for the base-spacetime
, the internal-space metric
components, the nonlinear connection
, and the scalar field
were found that obeyed the generalized gravitational field equations, in addition to satisfying the
zero-torsion conditions for
of the torsion components. See [
19] for details.
The embedding of the 8D curved phase space into the 12D flat phase space is described by equating the 8D line interval
in (79) with the 12D one
. After doing so, given
one learns that
Equations (81)–(83) determine the functional form of after one inserts the functional forms of the embedding functions found in the previous section. However, there is a subtlety: to match indices with the ones appearing in Equations (77a–d) and (78a,b) it is necessary to make the following key replacements (index adjustments) , , , in Equations (79) and (81)–(83).
To sum up, the (classical) embedding functions
obtained in the previous section in Equations (77a–d) and (78a,b) determine the functional form of
in Equations (81)–(83), after adjusting the indices. The key question is whether or not the solutions found for
also solve the vacuum field equations. If not, can one find the appropriate field/matter sources which are consistent with these solutions? It is natural to assume that quantum matter/fields could be the source of the noncommutativity of the spacetime coordinates and momenta. After all, quantum fields live in spacetime. If this were not the case, what then is the source of this phase-space noncommutativity? Is it spacetime foam, dark matter, dark energy? If one expects to have a space–time–matter unification in the quantum gravity program, then, if matter curves spacetime, spacetime, in turn, could backreact on matter curving momentum space, “curving matter”. To conclude, to find solutions of Equations (81)–(83) for
(after adjusting indices) is a highly nontrivial task, and so is to verify that they also solve the field equations in [
19,
20,
21].