LORENTZ-SYMMETRY VIOLATIONS IN QUANTUM FIELD THEORY AND GENERAL RELATIVITY
Sawyer Star , Space Physics Dario Walter-Cardona , Space Physics
MENTOR Quentin Bailey , Physics and Astronomy
Modern life relies on technology that is based on a scientific understanding of the world around us, obtained from centuries of study. Scientists are still exploring the nature of fundamental physical laws in the universe. Our modern understanding of the universe relies on Einstein’s General Relativity (GR) to describe known gravitational phenomena and the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics to describe interactions of the fundamental building blocks of nature. Despite these successes, physicists are still searching for an underlying theory of everything that combines GR and the SM. Along these lines, there has been much work in the last 25 years regarding the possibility that fundamental principles of GR, such as Special Relativity (SR), could be broken on minuscule scales due to the nature of that underlying theory. This idea motivates theory and experiment to determine what could be measured in sensitive laboratory tests to provide a hint of the nature of a fundamental theory. SR is encapsulated in what is called “Lorentz symmetry”: experimental outcomes do not depend on the rotation or velocity of the laboratory. In this project, we will examine two aspects of Lorentz symmetry breaking: one in quantum field theory (QFT) and another in GR. QFT provides us with a framework that describes the creation and annihilation of particles, which is allowed by relativity and verified through experiments but not accounted for in traditional quantum mechanics.
SPACE GRANT AWARD
86 | URI DISCOVERY 2026
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