New heat kernel method in Lifshitz theories

We develop a new heat kernel method that is suited for a systematic study of the renormalization group flow in Hořava gravity (and in Lifshitz field theories in general). This method maintains covariance at all stages of the calculation, which is achieved by introducing a generalized Fourier transform covariant with respect to the nonrelativistic background spacetime. As a first test, we apply this method to compute the anisotropic Weyl anomaly for a (2 + 1)-dimensional scalar field theory around a z = 2 Lifshitz point and corroborate the previously found result. We then proceed to general scalar operators and evaluate their one-loop effective action. The covariant heat kernel method that we develop also directly applies to operators with spin structures in arbitrary dimensions.

Collision of particles near a three-dimensional rotating Hořava AdS black hole

We consider a three-dimensional rotating AdS black hole, which is a solution of Hořava gravity in the low-energy limit that corresponds to a Lorentz-violating version of the BTZ black hole, and we analyze the effect of the breaking of Lorentz invariance on the possibility that the black hole can act as a particle accelerator by analyzing the energy in the center-of-mass (CM) frame of two colliding particles in the vicinity of its horizons. We find that the critical angular momentum of particles increases when the Hořava parameter $$\xi $$ ξ increases and when the aether parameter b increases. Also, the particles can collide on the inner horizon with arbitrarily high CM energy if one of the particles has a critical angular momentum, possible for the BSW process. Here it is essential that, while for the extremal BTZ black hole the particles with critical angular momentum only can exist on the degenerate horizon, for the Lorentz-violating version of the BTZ black hole the particle with critical angular momentum can exist in a region away from the degenerate horizon. It is worth mentioning that the results exposed in this manuscript can be applied for the covariant version of Hořava gravity, where the covariant definition of the center-of-mass energy is well defined.

Extended Hořava Gravity with Physical Ground-State Wavefunction

We propose a new extended theory of Hořava gravity based on the following three conditions: (i) power-counting renormalizable, (ii) healthy IR behavior and (iii) a stable vacuum state in a quantized version of the theory. Compared with other extended theories, we stress that any realistic theory of gravity must have physical ground states when quantization is performed. To fulfill the three conditions, we softly break the detailed balance but keep its basic structure unchanged. It turns out that the new model constructed in this way can avoid the strong coupling problem and remains power-counting renormalizable, moreover, it has a stable vacuum state by an appropriate choice of parameters.