Ori Ganor - Research Description

UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Lorentz invariance - the principle that underlies special relativity - has been tested and established to a very high degree of accuracy. Cosmology, however, does involve a preferred reference frame - the expansion of the universe sets a preferred direction of time. Indeed, the absolute velocity of Earth (relative to the Csmic Microwave Background Radiation) has been determined by Smoot and Lubin [Astrophys.J.234:L83,1979] to be about 600 km/s. While this apparent cosmological "Lorentz violation" does not contradict the Lorentz invariance of the fundamental equations (it is this particular solution of the equations that describes our universe that is not Lorentz invariant), it is still natural to wonder whether there does exist a counterpart to this large scale Lorentz violation somewhere in high-energy physics. Afterall, the state of our universe was shaped by the high-energy processes at the very early universe. Over the years, there have been various theoretical proposals for modifications of the standard model that break Lorentz invariance slightly, and so far undetectably. There are very elaborate tests of Lorentz invariance, and there are very stringent constraints on it, but the possibility of Lorentz violation at very high scale energies is open. I am interested in models of Lorentz violation and their realization in string theory.
Recent tests of Lorentz violation by physicists at UC Berkeley include:

{nonlocality}

{E10}

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS