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

TL;DR

This paper explores the structure, classification, and conformal symmetry of elementary particles within a non-Archimedean, p-adic spacetime framework, revealing similarities and differences with real-number-based physics.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach to studying elementary particles over p-adic fields, including the construction of p-adic conformal spacetime and analysis of group representations.

Findings

Massive particles lack conformal symmetry in p-adic spacetime

Constructed p-adic conformal spacetime and analyzed group embeddings

Revealed structural similarities and differences with real-number physics

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 Poincar\'{e} 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 Poincar\'{e} group into the $p$-adic conformal group. Finally, we show that the massive and so called eventually masssive particles of the Poincar\'{e} 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.