Date of Award
2022
Document Type
Honors Thesis (Colby Access Only)
Department
Colby College. Physics and Astronomy Dept.
Advisor(s)
Robert Bluhm
Abstract
Gravity is explored as a gauge theory in the Poincare group. Vierbein formalism is used and torsion is included in the theory to incorporate fermions into the theory of general relativity. Specifically, spontaneous and explicit breaking of the translation symmetry is studied in a simple model in flat spacetime. The associated Nambu- Goldstone modes are explored. Then in a general model with gravity in Riemann- Cartan spacetime, Noether’s identities from Lorentz invariance and diffeomorphism invariance are compared with Noether’s identites from the Poincare invariance. We find that the Poincare transformation gives exactly the same Noether’s identities as those from using Lorentz invariance and diffeomorphism invariance. This shows that gravity can be described as a gauge theory in the Poincare group.
Keywords
General Relativity, gravity, torsion, diffeomorphism, translation, fundamental symmetry
Recommended Citation
Zhi, Yu, "Gravity as a Gauge Theory in the Poincare Group" (2022). Honors Theses. Paper 1336.https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/1336