Structure, classification, and conformal symmetry of elementary particles over non-archimedean space-time

Abstract

It is well known that at distances shorter than Planck length, no length measurements are possible. The Volovich hypothesis asserts that at sub-Planckian distances and times, spacetime itself has a non-Archimedean geometry. We discuss the structure of elementary particles, their classification, and their conformal symmetry under this hypothesis. Specifically, we investigate the projective representations of the p-adic Poincaré and Galilean groups, using a new variant of the Mackey machine for projective unitary representations of semidirect products of locally compact and second countable (lcsc) groups. We construct the conformal spacetime over p-adic fields and discuss the imbedding of the p-adic Poincaré group into the p-adic conformal group. Finally, we show that the massive and the so called eventually masssive particles of the Poincaré group do not have conformal symmetry. The whole picture bears a close resemblance to what happens over the field of real numbers, but with some significant variations.