Field theory, classical

Author(s):  
Mark Wilson

A physical quantity (such as mass, temperature or electrical strength) appears as a field if it is distributed continuously and variably throughout a region. In distinction to a ’lumped’ quantity, whose condition at any time can be specified by a finite list of numbers, a complete description of a field requires infinitely many bits of data (it is said to ’possess infinite degrees of freedom’). A field is classical if it fits consistently within the general framework of classical mechanics. By the start of the twentieth century, orthodox mechanics had evolved to a state of ontological dualism, incorporating a worldview where massive matter appears as ’lumped’ points which communicate electrical and magnetic influences to one another through a continuous intervening medium called the electromagnetic field. The problem of consistently describing how matter and fields function together has yet to be fully resolved.

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-34
Author(s):  
J. Iliopoulos ◽  
T.N. Tomaras

The purpose of this chapter is to recall the principles of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian classical mechanics. Many results are presented without detailed proofs. We obtain the Euler–Lagrange equations of motion, and show the equivalence with Hamilton’s equations. We derive Noether’s theorem and show the connection between symmetries and conservation laws. These principles are extended to a system with an infinite number of degrees of freedom, i.e. a classical field theory. The invariance under a Lie group of transformations implies the existence of conserved currents. The corresponding charges generate, through the Poisson brackets, the infinitesimal transformations of the fields as well as the Lie algebra of the group.


Author(s):  
N. Kemmer

SynopsisThe author maintains that a course in the classical theory of the electromagnetic field, with full exploitation of vector calculus methods, should be thought of as being as much of a basic essential in any physics honours course as is a course on classical mechanics. It is suggested that if the mathematical techniques are taught in a way that relates them directly to the central notions of field theory and avoids discussion of special techniques, the mathematical burden is sufficiently light to be borne by all physics students, not only those theoretically inclined. The course need not be of excessive length if it is understood as exclusively an introduction to field concepts and hence not to cover in any detail the electric and magnetic property of materials. A number of particular ideas arising from the author's teaching experience are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Yao ◽  
Akira Furusaki

AbstractWe formulate a ℤk-parafermionization/bosonization scheme for one-dimensional lattice models and field theories on a torus, starting from a generalized Jordan-Wigner transformation on a lattice, which extends the Majorana-Ising duality atk= 2. The ℤk-parafermionization enables us to investigate the critical theories of parafermionic chains whose fundamental degrees of freedom are parafermionic, and we find that their criticality cannot be described by any existing conformal field theory. The modular transformations of these parafermionic low-energy critical theories as general consistency conditions are found to be unconventional in that their partition functions on a torus transform differently from any conformal field theory whenk >2. Explicit forms of partition functions are obtained by the developed parafermionization for a large class of critical ℤk-parafermionic chains, whose operator contents are intrinsically distinct from any bosonic or fermionic model in terms of conformal spins and statistics. We also use the parafermionization to exhaust all the ℤk-parafermionic minimal models, complementing earlier works on fermionic cases.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Craps ◽  
Marine De Clerck ◽  
Philip Hacker ◽  
Kévin Nguyen ◽  
Charles Rabideau

Abstract Out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) that capture maximally chaotic properties of a black hole are determined by scattering processes near the horizon. This prompts the question to what extent OTOCs display chaotic behaviour in horizonless microstate geometries. This question is complicated by the fact that Lyapunov growth of OTOCs requires nonzero temperature, whereas constructions of microstate geometries have been mostly restricted to extremal black holes.In this paper, we compute OTOCs for a class of extremal black holes, namely maximally rotating BTZ black holes, and show that on average they display “slow scrambling”, characterized by cubic (rather than exponential) growth. Superposed on this average power-law growth is a sawtooth pattern, whose steep parts correspond to brief periods of Lyapunov growth associated to the nonzero temperature of the right-moving degrees of freedom in a dual conformal field theory.Next we study the extent to which these OTOCs are modified in certain “superstrata”, horizonless microstate geometries corresponding to these black holes. Rather than an infinite throat ending on a horizon, these geometries have a very deep but finite throat ending in a cap. We find that the superstrata display the same slow scrambling as maximally rotating BTZ black holes, except that for large enough time intervals the growth of the OTOC is cut off by effects related to the cap region, some of which we evaluate explicitly.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (14) ◽  
pp. 1944006
Author(s):  
ChunJun Cao ◽  
Aidan Chatwin-Davies ◽  
Ashmeet Singh

According to the holographic bound, there is only a finite density of degrees of freedom in space when gravity is taken into account. Conventional quantum field theory does not conform to this bound, since in this framework, infinitely many degrees of freedom may be localized to any given region of space. In this paper, we explore the viewpoint that quantum field theory may emerge from an underlying theory that is locally finite-dimensional, and we construct a locally finite-dimensional version of a Klein–Gordon scalar field using generalized Clifford algebras. Demanding that the finite-dimensional field operators obey a suitable version of the canonical commutation relations makes this construction essentially unique. We then find that enforcing local finite dimensionality in a holographically consistent way leads to a huge suppression of the quantum contribution to vacuum energy, to the point that the theoretical prediction becomes plausibly consistent with observations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingli Zhou ◽  
Bo-Qiang Ma

We compare the Lorentz violation terms of the pure photon sector between two field theory models, namely, the minimal standard model extension (SME) and the standard model supplement (SMS). From the requirement of the identity of the intersection for the two models, we find that the free photon sector of the SMS can be a subset of the photon sector of the minimal SME. We not only obtain some relations between the SME parameters but also get some constraints on the SMS parameters from the SME parameters. The CPT-odd coefficients(kAF)αof the SME are predicted to be zero. There are 15 degrees of freedom in the Lorentz violation matrixΔαβof free photons of the SMS related with the same number of degrees of freedom in the tensor coefficients(kF)αβμν, which are independent from each other in the minimal SME but are interrelated in the intersection of the SMS and the minimal SME. With the related degrees of freedom, we obtain the conservative constraints(2σ)on the elements of the photon Lorentz violation matrix. The detailed structure of the photon Lorentz violation matrix suggests some applications to the Lorentz violation experiments for photons.


Author(s):  
M.A. Bubenchikov ◽  
◽  
A.M. Bubenchikov ◽  
D.V. Mamontov ◽  
◽  
...  

The aim of this work is to apply classical mechanics to a description of the dynamic state of C20@C80 diamond complex. Endohedral rotations of fullerenes are of great interest due to the ability of the materials created on the basis of onion complexes to accumulate energy at rotational degrees of freedom. For such systems, a concept of temperature is not specified. In this paper, a closed description of the rotation of large molecules arranged in diamond shells is obtained in the framework of the classical approach. This description is used for C20@C80 diamond complex. Two different problems of molecular dynamics, distinguished by a fixing method for an outer shell of the considered bimolecular complex, are solved. In all the cases, the fullerene rotation frequency is calculated. Since a class of possible motions for a single carbon body (molecule) consists of rotations and translational displacements, the paper presents the equations determining each of these groups of motions. Dynamic equations for rotational motions of molecules are obtained employing the moment of momentum theorem for relative motions of the system near the fullerenes’ centers of mass. These equations specify the operation of the complex as a molecular pendulum. The equations of motion of the fullerenes’ centers of mass determine vibrations in the system, i.e. the operation of the complex as a molecular oscillator.


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