High-Energy Nuclear Physics with Lorentz Symmetry Violation

Abstract

If textbook Lorentz invariance is actually a property of the equations describing a sector of the excitations of vacuum above some critical distance scale, several sectors of matter with different critical speeds in vacuum can coexist and an absolute rest frame (the vacuum rest frame) may exist without contradicting the apparent Lorentz invariance felt by "ordinary" particles (particles with critical speed in vacuum equal to $c$, the speed of light). Sectorial Lorentz invariance, reflected by the fact that all particles of a given dynamical sector have the same critical speed in vacuum, will then be an expression of a fundamental sectorial symmetry (e.g. preonic grand unification or extended supersymmetry) protecting a parameter of the equations of motion. Furthermore, the sectorial Lorentz symmetry may be only a low-energy limit, in the same way as the relation $ω$ (frequency) = $c_s$ (speed of sound) $k$ (wave vector) holds for low-energy phonons in a crystal. In this context, phenomena such as the absence of Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff for protons and nuclei and the stability of unstable particles (e.g. neutron, several nuclei...) at very high energy are basic properties of a wide class of noncausal models where local Lorentz invariance is broken introducing a fundamental length. Observable phenomena are expected at very short wavelength scales, even if Lorentz symmetry violation remains invisible to standard low-energy tests. We present a detailed discussion of the implications of Lorentz symmetry violation for very high-energy nuclear physics.