Spatial Isometries Research Articles

Time-dependent scalings and Fock quantization of a massless scalar field in Kantowski–Sachs

Abstract We address the issue of inequivalent Fock representations in quantum field theory in a curved homogenous and anisotropic cosmological background, namely Kantowski–Sachs spacetime, which can also be used to describe the interior of a nonrotating black hole. A family of unitarily equivalent Fock representations that are invariant under the spatial isometries and implement a unitary dynamics can be achieved by means of a field redefinition that consists of a specific anisotropic scaling of the field configuration and a linear transformation of its momentum. Remarkably, we show that this kind of field redefinition is in fact unique under our symmetry and unitary requirements. However, the physical properties of the Hamiltonian dynamics that one obtains in this way are not satisfactory, inasmuch as the action of the Hamiltonian on the corresponding particle states is ill defined. To construct a quantum theory without this problem, we need a further canonical transformation that is time- and mode-dependent and is not interpretable as an anisotropic scaling. The old and new Fock representations, nevertheless, are unitarily equivalent. The freedom that is introduced when allowing for this further canonical transformation can be fixed by demanding an asymptotic diagonalization of the Hamiltonian and a minimal absorption of dynamical phases. In this way, the choice of vacuum and the associated Fock representation are asymptotically determined.

Geometric surprises in the Python's lunch conjecture

A bulge surface, on a time reflection-symmetric Cauchy slice of a holographic spacetime, is a non-minimal extremal surface that occurs between two locally minimal surfaces homologous to a given boundary region. According to the python’s lunch conjecture of Brown et al., the bulge’s area controls the complexity of bulk reconstruction, in the sense of the amount of post-selection that needs to be overcome for the reconstruction of the entanglement wedge beyond the outermost extremal surface. We study the geometry of bulges in a variety of classical spacetimes, and discover a number of surprising features that distinguish them from more familiar extremal surfaces such as Ryu-Takayanagi surfaces: they spontaneously break spatial isometries, both continuous and discrete; they are sensitive to the choice of boundary infrared regulator; they can self-intersect; and they probe entanglement shadows, orbifold singularities, and compact spaces such as the sphere in AdS_p× S^qp×Sq. These features imply, according to the python’s lunch conjecture, novel qualitative differences between complexity and entanglement in the holographic context. We also find, surprisingly, that extended black brane interiors have a non-extensive complexity; similarly, for multi-boundary wormhole states, the complexity pleateaus after a certain number of boundaries have been included.

Inertial-Based Integration With Transformed INS Mechanization in Earth Frame

This article proposes to use a newly derived transformed inertial navigation system (INS) mechanization to fuse INS with other complementary navigation systems. Through formulating the attitude, velocity, and position as one group state of a group of double direct spatial isometries <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathbb{S}{\mathbb{E}_2}(3)$</tex-math></inline-formula> , the transformed INS mechanization has proven to be group affine, which means that the corresponding vector error state model will be trajectory-independent. In order to make use of the transformed INS mechanization in inertial-based integration, both the right and left vector error state models are derived. The INS/GPS and INS/Odometer integration are investigated as two representatives of inertial-based integration. Some application aspects of the derived error state models in the two applications are presented, which include how to select the error state model, initialization of the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathbb{S}{\mathbb{E}_2}(3)$</tex-math></inline-formula> based error state covariance, and feedback correction corresponding to the error state definitions. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations and land vehicle experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the derived error state models. It is shown that the most striking superiority of using the derived error state models is their ability to handle the large initial attitude misalignments, which is just the result of log-linearity property of the derived error state models. Therefore, the derived error state models can be used in the so-called attitude alignment for the two applications. Moreover, the derived right error state-space model is also very preferred for long-endurance INS/Odometer integration due to the filtering consistency caused by its less dependence on the global state estimate.

Strapdown Inertial Navigation System Initial Alignment Based on Group of Double Direct Spatial Isometries

The task of strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) initial alignment is to calculate the attitude transformation matrix from body frame to navigation frame. In this paper, such attitude transformation matrix is divided into two parts through introducing the initial inertially fixed navigation frame as inertial frame. The attitude changes of the navigation frame corresponding to the defined inertial frame can be exactly calculated with known velocity and position provided by GNSS. The attitude from body frame to the defined inertial frame is estimated based on the SINS mechanization in inertial frame. The attitude, velocity and position in inertial frame are formulated together as element of the group of double direct spatial isometries.It is proven that the group state model in inertial frame satisfies a particular "group affine" property and the corresponding error model satisfies a "log linear" autonomous differential equation on the Lie algebra. Based on such striking property, the attitude from body frame to the defined inertial frame can be estimated based on the linear error model with even extreme large misalignments. Two different error state vectors are extracted based on right and left matrix multiplications and the detailed linear state space models are derived based on the right and left errors for SINS mechanization in inertial frame. With the derived linear state space models, the explicit initial alignment procedures have been presented. Extensive simulation and field tests indicate that the initial alignment based on the left error model can perform quite well within a wide range of initial attitude errors, although the used filter is still a type of linear Kalman filter. This method is promising in practical products abandoning the traditional coarse alignment stage.

Black-hole microstate spectroscopy: Ringdown, quasinormal modes, and echoes

Deep conceptual problems associated with classical black holes can be addressed in string theory by the ``fuzzball'' paradigm, which provides a microscopic description of a black hole in terms of a thermodynamically large number of regular, horizonless, geometries with much less symmetry than the corresponding black hole. Motivated by the tantalizing possibility to observe quantum gravity signatures near astrophysical compact objects in this scenario, we perform the first $3+1$ numerical simulations of a scalar field propagating on a large class of multicenter geometries with no spatial isometries arising from ${\cal N}=2$ four-dimensional supergravity. We identify the prompt response to the perturbation and the ringdown modes associated with the photon sphere, which are similar to the black-hole case, and the appearance of echoes at later time, which is a smoking gun of some structure at the horizon scale and of the regular interior of these solutions. The response is in agreement with an analytical model based on geodesic motion in these complicated geometries. Our results provide the first numerical evidence for the dynamical linear stability of fuzzballs, and pave the way for an accurate discrimination between fuzzballs and black holes using gravitational-wave spectroscopy.

Uniqueness Criteria for the Fock Quantization of Dirac Fields and Applications in Hybrid Loop Quantum Cosmology

In generic curved spacetimes, the unavailability of a natural choice of vacuum state introduces a serious ambiguity in the Fock quantization of fields. In this review, we study the case of fermions described by a Dirac field in non-stationary spacetimes, and present recent results obtained by us and our collaborators about well-motivated criteria capable to ensure the uniqueness in the selection of a vacuum up to unitary transformations, at least in certain situations of interest in cosmology. These criteria are based on two reasonable requirements. First, the invariance of the vacuum under the symmetries of the Dirac equations in the considered spacetime. These symmetries include the spatial isometries. Second, the unitary implementability of the Heisenberg dynamics of the annihilation and creation operators when the curved spacetime is treated as a fixed background. This last requirement not only permits the uniqueness of the Fock quantization but, remarkably, it also allows us to determine an essentially unique splitting between the phase space variables assigned to the background and the fermionic annihilation and creation variables. We first consider Dirac fields in 2 + 1 dimensions and then discuss the more relevant case of 3 + 1 dimensions, particularizing the analysis to cosmological spacetimes with spatial sections of spherical or toroidal topology. We use this analysis to investigate the combined, hybrid quantization of the Dirac field and a flat homogeneous and isotropic background cosmology when the latter is treated as a quantum entity, and the former as a perturbation. Specifically, we focus our study on a background quantization along the lines of loop quantum cosmology. Among the Fock quantizations for the fermionic perturbations admissible according to our criteria, we discuss the possibility of further restricting the choice of a vacuum by the requisite of a finite fermionic backreaction and, moreover, by the diagonalization of the fermionic contribution to the total Hamiltonian in the asymptotic limit of large wave numbers of the Dirac modes. Finally, we argue in support of the uniqueness of the vacuum state selected by the extension of this diagonalization condition beyond the commented asymptotic region, in particular proving that it picks out the standard Poincaré and Bunch–Davies vacua for fixed flat and de Sitter background spacetimes, respectively.

Static black holes without spatial isometries: From AdS multipoles to electrovacuum scalarization

We review recent results on the existence of static black holes (BHs) without spatial isometries in four spacetime dimensions and propose a general framework for their study. These configurations are regular on and outside a horizon of spherical topology. Two different mechanisms allowing for their existence are identified. The first one relies on the presence of a solitonic limit of the BHs; when the solitons have no spatial isometries, the BHs, being a nonlinear bound state between the solitons and a horizon, inherit this property. The second one is related to BH scalarization, and the existence of zero modes of the scalar field without isometries around a spherical horizon. When the zero modes have no spatial isometries, the back-reaction of their nonlinear continuation makes the scalarized BHs inherit the absence of spatial continuous symmetries. A number of general features of the solutions are discussed together with possible generalizations.

Symmetry-induced fluctuation relations for dynamical observables irrespective of their behavior under time reversal.

We extend previous work to describe a class of fluctuation relations (FRs) that emerge as a consequence of symmetries at the level of stochastic trajectories in Markov chains. We prove that given such a symmetry, and for a suitable dynamical observable, it is always possible to obtain a FR under a biased dynamics corresponding to the so-called generalized Doob transform. The general transformations of the dynamics that we consider go beyond time-reversal or spatial isometries, and an implication is the existence of FRs for observables irrespective of their behavior under time reversal, for example for time-symmetric observables rather than currents. We further show how to deduce in the long-time limit these FRs from the symmetry properties of the generator of the dynamics. We illustrate our results with four examples that highlight the novel features of our work.

On the inexistence of self-gravitating solitons in generalised axion electrodynamics

Building upon the methods used recently in [1], we establish the inexistence of self-gravitating solitonic solutions for both static and strictly stationary asymptotically flat spacetimes in generalised axion electrodynamics. This is an Einstein-Maxwell-axion model, where the axion field θ is non-minimally coupled to the electromagnetic field. Considering the standard QCD axion coupling, we first present an argument for the absence of static axionic solitons, i.e. localised energy axionic-electromagnetic configurations, yielding an everywhere regular, horizonless, asymptotically flat, static spacetime. Then, for generic couplings f(θ) and g(θ) (subject to mild assumptions) between the axion field and the electromagnetic field invariants, we show there are still no solitonic solutions, even when dropping the staticity assumption and merely requiring a strictly stationary spacetime, regardless of the spatial isometries.

An action for extended string Newton-Cartan gravity

We construct an action for four-dimensional extended string Newton-Cartan gravity which is an extension of the string Newton-Cartan gravity that underlies nonrelativistic string theory. The action can be obtained as a nonrelativistic limit of the EinsteinHilbert action in General Relativity augmented with a term that contains an auxiliary two-form and one-form gauge field that both have zero flux on-shell. The four-dimensional extended string Newton-Cartan gravity is based on a central extension of the algebra that underlies string Newton-Cartan gravity.The construction is similar to the earlier construction of a three-dimensional Chern-Simons action for extended Newton-Cartan gravity, which is based on a central extension of the algebra that underlies Newton-Cartan gravity. We show that this three-dimensional action is naturally obtained from the four-dimensional action by a reduction over the spatial isometry direction longitudinal to the string followed by a truncation of the extended string Newton-Cartan gravity fields. Our construction can be seen as a special case of the construction of an action for extended p-brane Newton-Cartan gravity in p + 3 dimensions.

Spontaneous Scalarization of Charged Black Holes.

Extended scalar-tensor Gauss-Bonnet (ESTGB) gravity has been recently argued to exhibit spontaneous scalarization of vacuum black holes (BHs). A similar phenomenon can be expected in a larger class of models, which includes, e.g., Einstein-Maxwell scalar (EMS) models, where spontaneous scalarization of electrovacuum BHs should occur. EMS models have no higher curvature corrections, a technical simplification over ESTGB models that allows us to investigate, fully nonlinearly, BH scalarization in two novel directions. First, numerical simulations in spherical symmetry show, dynamically, that Reissner-Nordström (RN) BHs evolve into a perturbatively stable scalarized BH. Second, we compute the nonspherical sector of static scalarized BH solutions bifurcating from the RN BH trunk. Scalarized BHs form an infinite (countable) number of branches and possess a large freedom in their multipole structure. Unlike the case of electrovacuum, the EMS model admits static, asymptotically flat, regular on and outside the horizon BHs without spherical symmetry and even without any spatial isometries, which are thermodynamically preferred over the electrovacuum state. We speculate on a possible dynamical role of these nonspherical scalarized BHs.

Static Einstein-Maxwell Black Holes with No Spatial Isometries in AdS Space.

We explicitly construct static black hole solutions to the fully nonlinear, D=4, Einstein-Maxwell-anti-de Sitter (AdS) equations that have no continuous spatial symmetries. These black holes have a smooth, topologically spherical horizon (section), but without isometries, and approach, asymptotically, global AdS spacetime. They are interpreted as bound states of a horizon with the Einstein-Maxwell-AdS solitons recently discovered, for appropriate boundary data. In sharp contrast to the uniqueness results for a Minkowski electrovacuum, the existence of these black holes shows that single, equilibrium, black hole solutions in an AdS electrovacuum admit an arbitrary multipole structure.

Unique Fock quantization of a massive fermion field in a cosmological scenario

It is well known that the Fock quantization of field theories in general spacetimes suffers from an infinite ambiguity, owing to the inequivalent possibilities in the selection of a representation of the canonical commutation or anticommutation relations, but also owing to the freedom in the choice of variables to describe the field among all those related by linear time-dependent transformations, including the dependence through functions of the background. In this work we remove this ambiguity (up to unitary equivalence) in the case of a massive Dirac free field propagating in a spacetime with homogeneous and isotropic spatial sections of spherical topology. Two physically reasonable conditions are imposed in order to arrive to this result: (a) The invariance of the vacuum under the spatial isometries of the background, and (b) the unitary implementability of the dynamical evolution that dictates the Dirac equation. We characterize the Fock quantizations with a non trivial fermion dynamics that satisfy these two conditions. Then, we provide a complete proof of the unitary equivalence of the representations in this class under very mild requirements on the time variation of the background, once a criterion to discern between particles and antiparticles has been set.

Quantum unitary dynamics in cosmological spacetimes

We address the question of unitary implementation of the dynamics for scalar fields in cosmological scenarios. Together with invariance under spatial isometries, the requirement of a unitary evolution singles out a rescaling of the scalar field and a unitary equivalence class of Fock representations for the associated canonical commutation relations. Moreover, this criterion provides as well a privileged quantization for the unscaled field, even though the associated dynamics is not unitarily implementable in that case. We discuss the relation between the initial data that determine the Fock representations in the rescaled and unscaled descriptions, and clarify that the S-matrix is well defined in both cases. In our discussion, we also comment on a recently proposed generalized notion of unitary implementation of the dynamics, making clear the difference with the standard unitarity criterion and showing that the two approaches are not equivalent.

Invariants of the k-fold adjoint action of the Euclidean isometry group

A non-zero element of the Lie algebra \({\mathfrak{se}(3)}\) of the special Euclidean spatial isometry group SE(3) is known as a twist and the corresponding element of the projective Lie algebra is termed a screw. Either can be used to describe a one-degree-of-freedom joint between rigid components in a mechanical device or robot manipulator. This leads to a practical interest in multiple twists or screws, describing the overall instantaneous motion of such a device. In this paper, invariants of multiple twists under the action induced by the adjoint action of the group are determined. The ring of the polynomial invariants for the adjoint action of SE(3) acting on a single twist is well known to be finitely generated by the Klein and Killing forms, while a theorem of Panyushev (Publ. Res. Inst. Math. Sci. 4:1199–1257, 2007) gives finite generation for the real invariants of the induced action on two twists. However we are not aware of a corresponding theorem for k twists, where \({k\geq3}\). Following Study, Geometrie der Dynamen, (1903), we use the principle of transference to determine fundamental algebraic invariants and their syzygies. We prove that the ring of invariants for triple twists is rationally finitely generated by 13 of these invariants.

Unitary evolution and uniqueness of the Fock quantization in flat cosmologies

We study the Fock quantization of scalar fields with a time dependent mass in cosmological scenarios with flat compact spatial sections. This framework describes physically interesting situations like, e.g., cosmological perturbations in flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetimes, generally including a suitable scaling of them by a background function. We prove that the requirements of vacuum invariance under the spatial isometries and of a unitary quantum dynamics select (a) a unique canonical pair of field variables among all those related by time dependent canonical transformations which scale the field configurations, and (b) a unique Fock representation for the canonical commutation relations of this pair of variables. The proof is generalizable to any compact spatial topology in three or less dimensions, though we focus on the case of the three-torus owing to the especially relevant implications.

Inflation and inhomogeneities: a hybrid quantization

We provide a complete quantization of a homogeneous and isotropic spacetime with positive spatial curvature coupled to a massive scalar field in the framework of Loop Quantum Cosmology. The physical Hilbert space is constructed out of the space of initial data on the minimum volume section. By means of a perturbative treatment we introduce inhomogeneities and thereafter we adopt a hybrid quantum approach, in which these inhomogeneous degrees of freedom are described by a standard Fock quantization. For the considered case of compact spatial topology, the requirements of: i) invariance of the vacuum state under the spatial isometries, and ii) unitary implementation of the quantum dynamics, pick up a privileged set of canonical fields and a unique Fock representation (up to unitary equivalence).

Symmetries of 2-D Images: Cases without Periodic Translations

The different ways in which images, defined as scalar functions of the Euclidean plane, can be symmetrical is considered. The symmetries analyzed are relative to the class of image isometries, each of which is a combined spatial and intensity isometry. All symmetry types, apart from those with discrete periodic translations, are derived. Fifteen such types are found, including one that has not previously been reported. The novel type occurs when an image has a continuous line of centres of symmetry each like the one found in the Taiji (Yin-Yang) symbol.

On a class of 4D Kähler bases and AdS5supersymmetric black holes

We construct a class of toric Kahler manifolds, M_4, of real dimension four, a subset of which corresponds to the Kahler bases of all known 5D asymptotically AdS_5 supersymmetric black-holes. In a certain limit, these Kahler spaces take the form of cones over Sasaki spaces, which, in turn, are fibrations over toric manifolds of real dimension two. The metric on M_4 is completely determined by a single function H(x), which is the conformal factor of the two dimensional space. We study the solutions of minimal five dimensional gauged supergravity having this class of Kahler spaces as base and show that in order to generate a five dimensional solution H(x) must obey a simple sixth order differential equation. We discuss the solutions in detail, which include all known asymptotically AdS_5 black holes as well as other spacetimes with non-compact horizons. Moreover we find an infinite number of supersymmetric deformations of these spacetimes with less spatial isometries than the base space. These deformations vanish at the horizon, but become relevant asymptotically.

Future complete S1 symmetric solutions of the Einstein Maxwell Higgs system

In previous works we have obtained a proof of the non linear stability (i.e. future completeness for small initial data) of Einsteinian vacuum spacetimes with compact space sections and a S1 spatial isometry group, in the case where the space is an S1 bundle over a surface Σ of genus greater than one. We intend in this paper to extend this result to the Einstein Maxwell Higgs system.