Quantum Fields on Noncommutative Spacetimes: Theory and Phenomenology

TL;DR

This paper reviews the theoretical framework of quantum field theories on noncommutative spacetimes, explores their equivalences and differences, and discusses phenomenological implications including experimental bounds on noncommutativity scales.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of twisted quantum field theories on different noncommutative spacetimes and discusses phenomenological effects and experimental constraints.

Findings

Inequivalence between twisted QFTs on Moyal and Wick-Voros planes.

Identification of nonassociative products when gauge fields are included.

Experimental bounds on noncommutativity energy scale exceeding 10^{24} TeV.

Abstract

In the present work we review the twisted field construction of quantum field theory on noncommutative spacetimes based on twisted Poincar\'e invariance. We present the latest development in the field, in particular the notion of equivalence of such quantum field theories on a noncommutative spacetime, in this regard we work out explicitly the inequivalence between twisted quantum field theories on Moyal and Wick-Voros planes; the duality between deformations of the multiplication map on the algebra of functions on spacetime $\mathscr{F}(\mathbb{R}^4)$ and coproduct deformations of the Poincar\'e-Hopf algebra $H\mathscr{P}$ acting on~$\mathscr{F}(\mathbb{R}^4)$; the appearance of a nonassociative product on $\mathscr{F}(\mathbb{R}^4)$ when gauge fields are also included in the picture. The last part of the manuscript is dedicated to the phenomenology of noncommutative quantum field theories in the particular approach adopted in this review. CPT violating processes, modification of two-point temperature correlation function in CMB spectrum analysis and Pauli-forbidden transition in ${\rm Be}^4$ are all effects which show up in such a noncommutative setting. We review how they appear and in particular the constraint we can infer from comparison between theoretical computations and experimental bounds on such effects. The best bound we can get, coming from Borexino experiment, is $\gtrsim 10^{24}$ TeV for the energy scale of noncommutativity, which corresponds to a length scale $\lesssim 10^{-43}$ m. This bound comes from a different model of spacetime deformation more adapted to applications in atomic physics. It is thus model dependent even though similar bounds are expected for the Moyal spacetime as well as argued elsewhere.