Comparison of spacetime defects which are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic

Journal Article · Sat Nov 15 00:00:00 EST 2014 · Journal of Mathematical Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4900883· OSTI ID:22403055

Sorba, F. ^[1]

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1. Institute for Theoretical Physics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76128 Karlsruhe (Germany)

Certain remnants of a quantum spacetime foam can be modeled by a distribution of defects embedded in a flat classical spacetime. The presence of such spacetime defects affects the propagation of elementary particles. In this article, we show explicitly that both topology and differential structure of the defects are important for the particle motion. Specifically, we consider three types of spacetime defects which are described by the same topological manifold R×(RP{sup 3}−(point)) but which are not diffeomorphic to each other. We investigate the propagation of a massless scalar field over the three different manifolds and find different solutions of the Klein–Gordon equation.

• OSTI ID: 22403055
• Journal Information: Journal of Mathematical Physics, Vol. 55, Issue 11; Other Information: (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0022-2488
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
DEFECTS
DISTRIBUTION
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
FOAMS
MATHEMATICAL SOLUTIONS
SCALAR FIELDS
SPACE-TIME
TOPOLOGY