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Appendix B
UNITARY FIELD THEORY
AND QUANTUM GRAVITY
B.1. The process of unification in physics
B.2. Einstein's visions of geometric unitary field theory
B.3. Wheeler's geometrodynamics.
Gravity and topology.
B.4. Quantum
geometrodynamics B.5. Gravitational
field quantization
B.6. Unification
of fundamental interactions. Supergravity.
Superstrings.
B.7. General
principles and perspectives of unitary field theory
B.2. Einstein's visions of geometric unitary field theory
A. Einstein firmly
believed that nature, although literally bursting with the
diversity of various structures and phenomena, is very economical on basic principles . In the spirit of this vision,
Einstein worked on unitary field theories after the creation of the general
theory of relativity until the last days of his life . The idea of unitary field theory is extremely deep and beautiful:
according to it, there should be a single,
completely basic and all-encompassing physical field , the special manifestation of which would be all observed fields in
nature (gravitational, electromagnetic,
fields of strong and weak interactions and their manifestations
in subnuclear physics, for example) ; and thus all
happening
taking place in nature. In fact, there is nothing in the world
but this field, of which everything
is composed
- even material formations (eg particles) are a kind of local
"densification" of this field.
*) Speculations
on unitary field
This theories Einstein published his unitary theories on an
ongoing basis [78, part 2]. Nevertheless, there were reports (or
speculations and assumptions) that Einstein had succeeded at the
end of his life in creating a truly perfect and
"functioning" unitary field theory, which he refused
to publish for fear that the world was not yet ready for its
consequences, which could be exploited. . As tempting as
it may sound, and many people believe it, these reports are unfounded.
In the light of the further development of unitary theories of
the field, it turned out that despite all the erudition and
thought mastery of A. Einstein, the path he had taken could
not lead to such a result.
In this context, the so-called Philadelphia
experiment , which was allegedly carried out by the
US Navy in October 1943 using an electric generator developed by
Nikola Tesla, is often mentioned . Around
the deck of the large warship Eldridge, moored in the port of
Philadelphia, coils were placed, powered by a generator on board
with a strong electric current. The aim of the experiment was to
"make invisible" the ship due to a strong
electromagnetic field, which should allegedly "deflect"
light ..? .. Instead, under the influence of this strong
electromagnetic field allegedly disappeared
The ship Eldridge, which shrouded in fog *), appeared shortly in
the 400km distant port of Norfolk and returned to its original
location after a few hours (it was allegedly
accompanied by various catastrophic phenomena, including the
disappearance of sailors) .
*) If there is any truth to this whole story - as
it probably is not - the fog could have been
caused by smoke from the burned windings of electromagnets
overloaded by a strong electric current ..? ..
It was supposed to be a consequence
of Einstein's unitary field theory , when strong the
electromagnetic field " opened a new dimension in space
- time " through which " teleportation
" took place . Here, too, these are false
unsubstantiated legendsand the mystification of
the character of science fiction or UFO, spread by
sensational-greedy conspiracy authors. The electromagnetic field
used, although it might have seemed fantastically strong at the
time, was in fact insignificantly weak to
produce any observable relativistic effect (after
all, even a stronger field would not lead to the
stated effects ...) . At present, much stronger
electromagnetic fields are commonly used in many applications (eg accelerators or nuclear magnetic resonance, often
with the aid of superconducting electromagnets) , and of
course there are no indications of similar
effects ..! ..
So far, we have stood firm in the position of the source ® of the field : there is a source (which is in a sense "primitive") that excites the field around it, and the task of physics is to determine the laws by which the source creates this field. The source is something different from the field, it is a kind of "substance" - first to the foreign theory of the field itself. Looking at the Maxwell equations F ik;k = 4 p ji or in Einstein equation Rik - 1/2 gikR = 8pTik, we see that on the left side there is an expression describing the field and on the right side a quantity describing the source. If we compare each c harakter two variables, we can say, along with Einstein, that "phenomenological" feed on the right side (tensor of energy-momentum T ik or four-lane j i ) acts in comparison with concise expression describing the field on the left side as "wooden hut next to a palace of glass and aluminum". "composed" of an array. In perfect field theory there should be no such dualism, a source different from the field should not exist; the source should also be "composed" of an field.
The unitary theory of the field turns the classic problem " How does the source wake the field around it? " completely to the head and asks: " How is what we consider to be a source composed of its field? ". Problem excitation field, as well as the problem of interactions with other particles of that field, then no automatic Void - all the fields which are in some way (after d le their internal laws) develops in space and time. Only in our observation do some areas of the field appear to us as "sources" and others as excited or acting "fields".
In the 1920s, physics
knew only two types of forces: electromagnetic and gravitational . Both of these forces decrease
with the square of the distance from the (point) source, and the
speed of gravity according to the OTR is the same as the speed of
light - so the idea was suggested that they were somehow
interconnected.
After creating a general theory of relativity - which is actually
the geometry of gravity - A. Einstein worked hard for almost 40
years to create a unitary theory of the gravitational and electromagnetic field and
complete his impressive life's work. This is because the
electromagnetic field has many similar properties to the
gravitational field (§1.4-1.5), so it naturally offered itself
as the most suitable "candidate" for geometrization and
thus for unification with an already geometrized gravitational
field. And the most natural way to include electromagnetism in
gravity seemed to be to generalize the geometric properties of
Riemann's curved spacetime OTR t and k so that the newly formed
geometric structures somehow describe the electromagnetic
field.
The
unitary theories of the gravitational-electromagnetic field,
developed in the 1920s and 1940s by Einstein and other
physicists, did not lead to the desired result, and therefore we
will make only a very brief mention of them (for
more details see eg [169], [78], [146]). . These theories can be roughly
divided into two groups :
a)
Generalization of geometric properties of 4-dimensional spacetime
The first attempt in this direction belongs to H. Weel, who in
1917-19 generalized Riemann's geometry in the sense that with the
parallel transfer of a vector around a closed curve, not only the
direction but also the size of the vector can change. In this
Weyl (conformal) geometry, the general covariance group (used in
OTR) is extended by calibration transformations of the metric g ik
g ' ik = l (x). g ik , | (B.1) |
in which the lengths of all vectors at a given point are multiplied by the same arbitrary coefficient l , which may vary from point to point. The length of the vector l then changes according to the law at infinitesimal parallel transmission
d l = - l. j i dx i . | (B.2) |
Thus, in addition to the fundamental quadratic form ds 2 = g ik dx i dx k , another linear differential form d j = j i .dx i describing the nonintegrability of the length of the vectors arises in Weyl geometry . The quantities j i are components of the four-vector and during the calibration transformations (B.1) they are transformed according to the law
j ' i = j i - ¶ ln l (xi) / ¶ x i . | (B.3) |
The resulting four-vector Weyl interpreted as an electromagnetic 4-potential and a four-dimensional rotation F ik = j k; i - j i; k this field, which is calibration invariant, as a tensor of the electromagnetic field. The equations of the electromagnetic and gravitational fields should then arise from a single variational principle, invariant with respect to both general coordinate transformations and calibration transformations (B.1); this led to the quadratic Lagrangian and thus to the 4th order differential equations.
Another method of generalizing the axiomatics of Riemann geometry for the purposes of unitarization was designed and elaborated by A. Einstein in 1946-53. Generalization consists in that instead of a symmetric tensor g also in basic form g also dx and dx to at desert unsymmetrical metric tensor g also well asymmetrical coefficients of an affine connection G also l . It was the antisymmetric part of the metric that Einstein tried to interpret as an electromagnetic field, while the symmetrical part described gravity similarly as in GTR.
b) Five-dimensional unitary theories
Another approach
to the problem of the unification of gravitational and
electromagnetic field developed in the year. 1 921-25
T.Kaluza O.Klein and that for a general description of physical
properties suggested using the five-dimensional
manifold
(in which OTR is some space-4-dimensional subspace) in hope that
the fifth dimension could express the electromagnetic field.
Kaluza and Klein were apparently inspired by the way in which
Minkowski unified the three-dimensional separate electric and
magnetic fields by moving to fours of specific spacetime (§1.5). From
the generalized theory of gravity (curved spacetime) in five
dimensions, we could then get the theory of electromagnetism and
gravity in four dimensions.
We observe physical spacetime as four-dimensional, so the "excess" fifth dimension (which has no direct physical meaning) must be disposed of by placing a suitable condition on the five-dimensional geometry. Kaluza originally introduced a relatively artificial requirement of "cylindricality", according to which there should be a one-dimensional group of isometric transformations in a five-dimensional variety; this creates a Killing vector field, which leads to the fact that the 5-dimensional geometric structure can be fully described by the geometry of a four-dimensional hyperplate. Later, Einstein, Bergmann and Bargmann [17] proposed another geometric condition: the closedness (compactness) of a five-dimensional variety in the fifth dimension. The five-dimensional variety would then have the topological structure M 4 ´ S 1 , where M 4 is Minkowski for s toročas and S 1 is a circle, ie the variety would have the shape of a thin tube . If the radius of this tube (compaction radius) is small enough (subatomic dimensions), no macroscopic object can move in the fifth dimension and spacetime effectively appears to be four-dimensional .
The integral of the action of the general theory of relativity in five-dimensional space is considered in the form
![]() |
(B.4) |
where g AB is a five-dimensional metric, g (5) = det (g AB ) and R (5) = g AB .R AB is the scalar curvature of five-dimensional space. The metrics of five-dimensional space are chosen in the form
g AB = j -1/3 . | | | g ik + A i A k j | A i j | | | , | A, B = 0,1,2,3,5 | (B.5) |
| | A k j | j | | | i, k = 0,1,2,3 |
where g ik is the usual metric tensor of 4-dimensional spacetime, the 5th component of g 5k is identified (except for the scalar factor j ) with the four-potential of the electromagnetic field *). Assuming that the metric g AB does not depend on the coordinate x 5 , substituting the metric (B.5) into the action (B.4) after the integration according to x 5 we get
![]() |
(B.6) |
If we omit the scalar field j
(see note *), the
integral of the action in Kaluzov-Klein theory is equal to the
sum of Einstein's gravitational term and U (1) -calibration term
given by the tensor F ik = A i; k - A k; i , which can be
interpret as Maxwell's electro magnetic field. The calibration transformation A i ® A i + ¶l / ¶ x i is generated by a
special coordinate transformation in 5-dimensional space: x ' i
= x i , x' 5 = x 5 + l (x i ).
*) In (B.5) the
parameterization of the metric g AB and the designation of quantities are
chosen without prejudice to generality so as to obtain Einstein's
and Maxwell's equations in the usual form. The fifth field
variable - the scalar quantity j - is
superfluous in Kaluzov-Klein theory, and Kaluza ruled it out by
simply placing it exactly one. Attempts were later made to
understand the significance of this scalar field and give
it a cosmological significance; Brans and Dicke related this
field to a long-range scalar field in
their so-called scalar-tensor theory of gravity (outlined in
Appendix A, §A.2).
Einstein and Bergman they hadl certain time, hoping
periodicity fields to the fifth compactifed coordinate (along which would
field can be varied with a period equal to the length of the
circle compactification or its integer multiples) could explain the quantum effects and possible to create classic
models element plated also in northern particles . However, this
resemblance to Bohr-Broglie's quantization proved to be
superficial, and the corresponding hopes did not materialize.
One
of the objections against Kaluza-Klein theory it lies in it that this theory is not actually in the
true sense uniform gravitation and electromagnetism: are
separated invariant manner - as "oil and water".
Multidimensional
unitary theories
Kaluza-Klein theory did not lead to the desired
results and for a long time it fell into virtually oblivion. In
recent years, however, an unexpected "renaissance" of
the Kaluz-Klein concept has taken place in connection with
efforts to geometrically formulate supergravity theories. These
are generalized Kaluz-Klein theories
built in
superspaces, where additional dimensions of a spinor
character expressing the internal properties of interactions are
introduced; it turns out that, for example, the 11-dimensional
Kaluza-Klein theory could unify all known
particle interactions - see §B.6. Kaluz-Klein theories also
provide interesting possibilities for models of the universe with
a higher number of dimensions, as mentioned in §5.7.
The basic idea of multidimensional unitary theories with
compacted dimensions is that the physical laws we observe depend
on the geometric properties of other, hidden dimensions. There
are many solutions in multidimensional theories, differing, for
example, in the metric size of compactifications. The compacted
dimensions are too small to be observed or detected in any way.
However, different geometries of additional dimensions imply
different kinds of particles and forces, which causes different
physical phenomena in the macroscopic world.
So much so briefly about the proposals of the unitary field theory of the 20s-40s. These theories have never crossed the speculative level. In the meantime, research in the field of atomic physics has revealed new laws that govern the microworld - the laws of quantum physics . And two other types of fundamental interactions have been discovered - strong and weak interactions , which have completely different properties than gravitational and electromagnetic forces. This pushed earlier unitary theories into the background.
We will now describe in a more detailed way in §B.3 another approach, the so-called geometrodynamics of J.A.Wheeler [180], [275], [277]. The name was created by analogy with electrodynamics . Just as electrodynamics describes the dynamics of an electromagnetic field, geometrodynamics examines the dynamics of space-time geometry , ie, according to the GTR, the behavior of a gravitational field. "Geodynamics" often refers to the whole general theory of relativity; however, this will be geometrodynamics in the narrower sense.
Gravity, black holes and space-time physics : | ||
Gravity in physics | General theory of relativity | Geometry and topology |
Black holes | Relativistic cosmology | Unitary field theory |
Anthropic principle or cosmic God | ||
Nuclear physics and physics of ionizing radiation | ||
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