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High Energy Physics Seminar - Kevin Zhou (UC Berkeley) - "Electromagnetism and Gravity with Continuous Spin"

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Department of Physics
Location
Room 464
Date
Oct 4, 2024   11:00 am  
Speaker
Kevin Zhou (UC Berkeley)
Contact
Brandy Koebbe
E-Mail
BKOEBBE@ILLINOIS.EDU
Views
39
Originating Calendar
Physics - High Energy Physics Seminar

Powerful general arguments allow only a few families of long-range interactions, exemplified by gauge field theories of electromagnetism and gravity. However, all of these arguments presuppose that massless fields have zero spin scale and hence a single boost invariant helicity. I will present a Lagrangian formalism describing interactions of matter particles with bosonic "continuous spin" fields with nonzero spin scale, and thereby an infinite number of helicity modes. Remarkably, physical observables such as forces and radiation emission are well approximated by familiar theories in the ultraviolet, with calculable, universal, and observable deviations at low frequencies and long distances. Furthermore, scattering amplitudes feature novel, nontrivial analytic structures which ensure they remain finite and unitary. These infrared modifications to familiar forces, long thought impossible, may shed light on the hierarchy and cosmological constant problems.


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