Particle-dependent deformations of Lorentz symmetry

Abstract

I here investigate what is arguably the most significant residual challenge for the proposal of phenomenologically viable "DSR deformations" of relativistic kinematics, which concerns the description of composite particles, such as atoms. In some approaches to the formalization of possible scenarios for DSR-deformation of Lorentz symmetry it emerges that composite particles should have relativistic properties different from the ones of their constituent "fundamental particles", but these previous results provided no clue as to how the mismatch of relativistic properties could be consistently implemented. I show that it is possible to implement a fully consistent DSR-relativistic description of kinematics endowing different types of particles with suitably different deformed-Lorentz-symmetry properties. I also contemplate the possibility that some types of particles (or macroscopic bodies) behave according to completely undeformed special relativity, which in particular might apply to the DSR description of the macroscopic bodies that constitute measuring devices ("observers"). The formalization is also applicable to cases where different fundamental particles have different relativistic properties, leading to a type of phenomenology which I illustrate by considering possible applications to the ongoing analyses of the "Lorentz-symmetry anomaly" that was recently tentatively reported by the OPERA collaboration. Some of the new elements here introduced in the formulation of relativistic kinematics appear to also provide the starting point for the development of a correspondingly novel mathematical formulation of spacetime-symmetry algebras.