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Peter Horvathy

Publications and source records attributed to Peter Horvathy.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

Globally defined Carroll symmetry of gravitational waves

The local Carroll symmetry of a gravitational wave found in Baldwin-Jeffery-Rosen coordinates is extended to a globally defined one by switching to Brinkmann coordinates. Two independent globally defined solutions of a Sturm-Liouville equation allow us to describe both the symmetries (translations and Carroll boosts) and the geodesic motions. One of them satisfies particular initial conditions which imply zero initial momentum, while the other does not. Pure displacement arises when the latter is turned off by requiring the momentum to vanish and when the wave parameters take, in addition, some particular values which correspond to having an integer half-wave number. The relation to the Schwarzian derivative is highlighted. We illustrate our general statements by the P\"oschl-Teller profile.

gr-qc

Schr\"odinger symmetry: a historical review

This paper reviews the history of the conformal extension of Galilean symmetry, now called Schr\"odinger symmetry. In the physics literature, its discovery is commonly attributed to Jackiw, Niederer and Hagen (1972). However, Schr\"odinger symmetry has a much older ancestry: the associated conserved quantities were known to Jacobi in 1842/43 and its euclidean counterpart was discovered by Sophus Lie in 1881 in his studies of the heat equation. A convenient way to study Schr\"odinger symmetry is provided by a non-relativistic Kaluza-Klein-type "Bargmann" framework, first proposed by Eisenhart (1929), but then forgotten and re-discovered by Duval {\it et al.} only in 1984. Representations of Schr\"odinger symmetry differ by the value $z=2$ of the dynamical exponent from the value $z=1$ found in representations of relativistic conformal invariance. For generic values of $z$, whole families of new algebras exist, which for $z=2/\ell$ include the $\ell$-conformal galilean algebras. We also review the non-relativistic limit of conformal algebras and that this limit leads to the $1$-conformal galilean algebra and not to the Schr\"odinger algebra. The latter can be recovered in the Bargmann framework through reduction. A distinctive feature of Galilean and Schr\"odinger symmetries are the Bargmann super-selection rules, algebraically related to a central extension. An empirical consequence of this was known as "mass conservation" already to Lavoisier. As an illustration of these concepts, some applications to physical ageing in simple model systems are reviewed.

hep-th

Isospin precession in non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm scattering

The concept of pseudoclassical isospin is illustrated by the non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm effect proposed by Wu and Yang in 1975. The spatial motion is free however the isospin precesses when the enclosed magnetic flux and the incoming particle's isosopin are not parallel. The non-Abelian phase factor $\mathfrak{F}$ of Wu and Yang acts on the isospin as an S-matrix. The scattering becomes side-independent when the enclosed flux is quantized, ${\Phi}_N=N\Phi_0$ with $N$ an integer. The gauge group $SU(2)$ is an internal symmetry and generates conserved charges only when the flux is quantized, which then splits into two series: for $N=2k$ $SU(2)$ acts trivially but for $N=1+2k$ the implementation is twisted. The orbital and the internal angular momenta are separately conserved. The double rotational symmetry is broken to $SO(2)\times SO(2)$ when $N$ odd. For unquantized flux there are no internal symmetries, the charge is not conserved and protons can be turned into neutrons.

hep-th

Anyonic spin-Hall effect on the Black Hole horizon

Using the fact that the horizon of black holes is a Carroll manifold, we show that an ``exotic photon'' i.e. a particle without mass and charge but with anyonic spin, magnetic moment and ``exotic'' charges associated with the 2-parameter central extension of the 2-dimensional Carroll group moves on the horizon of a Kerr-Newman Black Hole consistently with the Hall law.

gr-qc

Conformal Galilei groups, Veronese curves, and Newton-Hooke spacetimes

Finite-dimensional nonrelativistic conformal Lie algebras spanned by polynomial vector fields of Galilei spacetime arise if the dynamical exponent is z=2/N with N=1,2,.... Their underlying group structure and matrix representation are constructed (up to a covering) by means of the Veronese map of degree N. Suitable quotients of the conformal Galilei groups provide us with Newton-Hooke nonrelativistic spacetimes with a quantized reduced negative cosmological constant λ=-N.

hep-th

Geometrical Spinoptics and the Optical Hall Effect

Geometrical optics is extended so as to provide a model for spinning light rays via the coadjoint orbits of the Euclidean group characterized by color and spin. This leads to a theory of ``geometrical spinoptics'' in refractive media. Symplectic scattering yields generalized Snell-Descartes laws that include the recently discovered optical Hall effect.

math-ph