On the Failure of Spin-Statistics Connection in Quantum Gravity

TL;DR

This paper discusses how topological geons in quantum gravity can violate the traditional spin-statistics connection, leading to potential low-energy physical effects such as CPT violations and cosmological spectrum distortions.

Contribution

It explores the violation of the spin-statistics connection by geons in quantum gravity and discusses related physical implications and connections to supersymmetry.

Findings

Geons can have half-integer spins and violate spin-statistics.

Violations may cause CPT and causality violations.

Potential observable effects include distortions in the cosmic microwave background.

Abstract

Many years ago Friedman and Sorkin [1] established the existence of certain topological solitonic excitations in quantum gravity called (topological) geons. Geons can have quantum numbers like charge and can be tensorial or spinorial having integer or half-odd integer spin. A striking result is that geons can violate the canonical spin-statistics connection [2,3]. Such violation induces novel physical effects at low energies. The latter will be small since the geon mass is expected to be of the order of Plank mass. Nevertheless, these effects are very striking and include CPT and causality violations and distortion of the cosmic microwave spectrum. Interesting relations of geon dynamics to supersymmetry are also discussed.