Jean-Pierre Gazeau

Anzhong Wang

Mohammad Enayati

Hamed Pejhan

This book reviews the construction of elementary systems living in de Sitter (dS) spacetime, in both the classical and quantum senses. Field theories on dS spacetime are among the most studied mathematical models of the Universe, whether for its earlier period (inflationary phase) or for its current phase of expansion acceleration (dark energy or cosmological constant). Classical elementary systems are Hamiltonian phase spaces, which are associated with co-adjoint orbits of the relativity group. On the other hand, quantum elementary systems are associated with (projective) unitary irreducible representations of the (possibly extended) relativity group (or one of its covering). This study emphasizes the conceptual issues arising in the formulation of such systems and discusses known results in a mathematically rigorous way. Particular attention is paid to: “smooth” transition from classical to quantum theory; physical content under vanishing curvature, from the point of view of a local (“tangent”) Minkowskian observer; and thermal interpretation (on the quantum level), in the sense of the Gibbons-Hawking temperature. Such a mathematical construction is of paramount importance to the understanding of the early Universe (due to the critical role that the dS metric plays in the inflationary cosmological scenarii) as well as to the construction of possible models for late-time cosmology (since a small positive cosmological constant or dark energy seems to be required by recent data). In this sense, this book uniquely blends mathematical physics (spacetime symmetry on classical and quantum levels) and theoretical physics (quantization, quantum field theory, and cosmology). Moreover, the level of exposition varies in different parts of the book so that both experts and beginners alike can utilize the book.

An Introduction to Elementary Systems and Modeling the Dark Energy Universe

The de Sitter (dS) Group and its Representations

This book is devoted to researchers who would like to investigate interactions among gravitational waves and matter fields beyond linear order, including the phenomena of memory effects, gravitational Faraday rotation, soft theorems, and formations of spacetime singularities due to the mutual focus of gravitational waves. Readers only require a basic understanding of general relativity to understand the materials.The book starts with an overview on the fundamentals of the Newman-Penrose formalism and a brief introduction to distribution theory, with which the author systematically develops a mathematical description of spacetimes of colliding plane waves. Then, the author presents a frame-independent definition of polarization of a plane gravitational wave in a curved spacetime, studies in detail the gravitational Faraday rotation of two plane gravitational waves, and shows that each of them can serve as a medium to the other precisely due to their nonlinear interactions. Exact solutions are also presented, which represent a variety of models including the collisions of two plane gravitational waves and the collisions of a plane gravitational wave with a dust shell, a massless scalar wave, an electromagnetic wave, or a neutrino wave. The formation of spacetime singularities due to nonlinear interactions and the effects of gravitational wave polarization on the nature of singularities are also explored.

Anzhong Wang

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