Doubly-special relativity
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Doubly-special relativity is a new theory of special relativity first postulated in a paper by Giovanni Amelino-Camelia. In this theory, he postulates that in addition to the speed of light, a characteristic energy scale based on the Planck scale should remain invariant under relativistic transformations. An alternate doubly-special relativity theory, inspired by that of Amelino-Camelia, was proposed later by João Magueijo and Lee Smolin. There exist proposals that these theories may be related to loop quantum gravity.
One of the motivations for this work is the observation of high-energy cosmic rays that appear to violate the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit: the so-called Oh-My-God particles.
The theory is highly speculative as of first publishing in 2002. The theory is built using a well-established approach in theoretical physics named invariance under transformation, which is colloquially (even in science) called relativistic. Nevertheless the theory is not considered a promising approach by a majority of members of the high-energy physics community.
Jafari and Shariati have constructed canonical transformations that relate both the doubly-special relativity theories of Amelino-Camelia and of Magueijo and Smolin to ordinary special relativity. They claim that doubly-special relativity is therefore only a complicated set of coordinates for an old and simple theory. However, all theories are related to free theories by canonical transformations. Therefore supporters of doubly-special relativity may claim that while it is equivalent to ordinary relativity, the momentum and energy coordinates of doubly-special relativity are those that appear in the usual form of the standard model interactions. This implies that ordinary special relativity and doubly-specially relativity make distinct physical predictions in high energy processes, and in particular the derivation of the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit is not valid if one uses asserts that quantum electrodynamics takes its usual Maxwell form only in the coordinate systems of doubly-special relativity.
External references
- Giovanni Amelino-Camelia, "Doubly-Special Relativity: First Results and Key Open Problems." Int. J. Mod. Phys. D11 (2002) 1643. Online copy at http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0210063
- Giovanni Amelino-Camelia, Doubly-Special Relativity.' http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0207049, a non-technical review
- Nosratollah Jafari, Ahmad Shariati, Doubly Special Relativity: A New Relativity or Not? http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0602075de:Doppelt-spezielle Relativitätstheorie