Space-times over normed division algebras, revisited

TL;DR

This paper explores the mathematical structures of spacetime using normed division and Clifford algebras, questioning why our universe appears real-valued despite potential complex, quaternionic, or octonionic frameworks, and examining the independence of real slices in higher-dimensional models.

Contribution

It investigates the reasons behind the real-valued nature of spacetime within the context of algebraic structures and analyzes how extended spaces relate to the standard model.

Findings

Real slices of higher-dimensional spacetime can be nearly independent due to different group representations.

Internal symmetries may manifest as transformations on homogeneous spaces of extended groups.

The algebraic structures influence the parametrization and independence of spacetime slices.

Abstract

Normed division and Clifford algebras have been extensively used in the past as a mathematical framework to accommodate the structures of the standard model and grand unified theories. Less discussed has been the question of why such algebraic structures appear in Nature. One possibility could be an intrinsic complex, quaternionic or octonionic nature of the spacetime manifold. Then, an obvious question is why spacetime appears nevertheless to be simply parametrized by the real numbers. How the real slices of an higher dimensional spacetime manifold might be almost independent from each other is discussed here. This comes about as a result of the different nature of the representations of the real kinematical groups and those of the extended spaces. Some of the internal symmetry transformations might however appear as representations on homogeneous spaces of the extended group transformations that cannot be implemented on the elementary states.