Electromagnetism as a Purely Geometric Theory

(iopscience.iop.org)

63 points | by andyjohnson0 4 hours ago

6 comments

  • nimish 35 minutes ago
    Am I missing something but the whole point of gauge theory (connections on a principal bundle) is that this is true, right? U(1) gauge theory gets you electromagnetism as a purely geometric result already?
  • molticrystal 39 minutes ago
    >The Dirac equation can be therefore interpreted as a purely geometric equation, where the mc2 term directly relates to spacetime metric. There is no need to involve any hypothetical Higgs field to explain the particle mass term.

    So what is to become of the Higgs field excitation and Higgs boson, and the experiments saying there are Higgs bosons? If this paper explains phenomenon better, does that me we have to reinterpret them?

  • phkahler 1 hour ago
    "As the electrodynamic force, i.e. the Lorentz force can be related directly to the metrical structure of spacetime, it directly leads to the explanation of the Zitterbewegung phenomenon and quantum mechanical waves as well."

    Cool because traditional QM wave function waves are not electromagnetic waves even though they seem to be the same thing in a double slit experiment.

  • nsoonhui 1 hour ago
    Forgive my ignorance but isn't this proven to be a dead end? There is this Kaluza Klein theory that proposes EM as the fifth dimension that has been ruled out, and Einstein spent large part of his later years trying to integrate EM into the GR geometric framework, with no success, mainly because he didn't know about strong and weak nuclear force as the other two fundamental force besides EM and gravity.
    • XorNot 1 hour ago
      Coming up with some "good enough" theoretical approximations could be extremely useful though.
  • ogogmad 3 hours ago
    For people wondering what "geometric" means here, they say: "the electromagnetic field should be derived purely and solely from the properties of the metric tensor".

    I'm not sure if that's exactly it.

    Question: Is there any relationship between this and Axiomatic Thermodynamics? I recall that also uses differential geometry.

    • nine_k 2 hours ago
      AFAICT the idea is that there are no "fields" or "forces" acting "in space", but the space itself bends just so that the normal mechanical motion through it looks the way the electromagnetic phenomena look.

      That is, the same deal as with gravity in GR.

    • philipov 2 hours ago
      Okay, so this is another attempt to unify quantum field theory and gravity. By using gravity to get quantum fields, rather than by trying to quantize gravity.
  • rkagerer 3 hours ago
    [flagged]