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arXiv · 2304.08574

Equivalence principle, de-Sitter space, and cosmological twistors

Maciej Dunajski
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Abstract

I discuss the impact of the positive cosmological constant on the interplay between the equivalence principle in general relativity, and the rules of quantum mechanics. At the non--relativistic level there is an ambiguity in the definition of a phase of a wave function measured by inertial and accelerating observes. This is the cosmological analogue of the Penrose effect, which can also be seen as a non--relativistic limit of the Unruh effect. The symmetries of the associated Schr\"odinger equation are generated by the Newton--Hooke algebra, which arises from a non--relativistic limit of a cosmological twistor space.

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Maciej Dunajski. 2023-04-17. Equivalence principle, de-Sitter space, and cosmological twistors. https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.08574

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