# PANIC 05 Meeting

1. Sep 26, 2005

### CarlB

Anyone else here going to the Particles And Nuclei International Conference 2005 at Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 24-28?
http://panic05.lanl.gov/

I've been "invited" to put up a poster and I'm planning on being there. Northern New Mexico in late October is beautiful country, and it looks like a pretty good set of talks.

Carl

2. Sep 26, 2005

### Math Is Hard

Staff Emeritus
I am going to sound like a total ignoramus, but I was wondering what is meant by "posters" and "poster sessions"? (I was looking at their website)

3. Sep 26, 2005

Poster Session is a visual presentation that you give by putting together a display, not an oral presentation. Each display gets the room of a single table, most use a poster board and paste materials to it--but you can also have machines, working models, computers, etc. on the table to get across your idea. Similar to what you see at a science fair. You stand by the display at appointed times to answer questions. It is a good way to network in detail new ideas with others that share an interest in your topic. I find it more difficult to put together a good poster type presentation than to give an oral powerpoint presentation.

4. Sep 26, 2005

### CarlB

An "oral session" means that people who happen to be unlucky enough to be in that room while you're talking will be partly bored stiff and partly amazed that the organizers let such a nut into the building.

A "poster session" means that they can ignore you much more easily. There will be something like 100+ poster sessions running simultaneously over about a 2.5 hour period, if I recall.

The abstract I sent in is this:

"ABSTRACT
Eschewing Einstein's version of gravitation, some quantum gravitation theorists are now exploring Euclidean versions of gravitation. An example is S. W. Hawking's latest paper hep-th/0507171 on quantum mechanics and black holes.

Euclidean relativity poses both a challenge and an opportunity for particle theorists. Traditional particle theory has been restricted by perfect Lorentz symmetry, but it has also been very successful. The strongest restriction is the Coleman-Mandula theorems, which prevent the internal particle symmetries from being written in terms of external geometry. How can we loosen this restriction on the internal symmetries of particles, without losing perfect Lorentz symmetry for their kinematics?

In Hestenes' Geometric Algebra (GA), the tangent vectors of a space-time manifold are associated with the basis vectors of a Clifford Algebra (CA). This provides an algebra that automatically obeys Lorentz symmetry. We will loosen the association by allowing the tangent vectors of the manifold to be associated with arbitrary elements of the CA, provided that the elements we choose satisfy the same commutation relations that the basis vectors satisfy. The resulting algebra is called the Particle Internal Symmetry Algebra'' or PISA.

For any spinor, the PISA and the GA will be indistinguishable as they are subalgebras of the same CA. Where there are differences is in how distinct subalgebras, which we can associate with different particles, are related to each other. The natural relations are exponential in form and will produce the sort of symmetry breaking needed to distinguish between different fermions.

For several choices of the space-time manifold, including several varieties of Euclidean relativity, we will obtain parameterizations for converting back and forth between GA and PISA calculations."

Some of the above is somewhat inaccurate. I'll correct before I get there.

Of course I'm really happy to be going. They haven't listed the participants yet or the parallel speakers, but there's one guy that I went to college with who will be there, running a parallel (oral) session. I haven't seen him since oh, 1984 maybe, though we've exchanged emails more recently. When they turned me down for a parallel talk I figured I wouldn't be going. Since I am not affiliated with an institution of higher learning, I expect to be turned down when I apply to physics conferences.

I really can't imagine a more pleasant way to spend four days then to spend it talking about physics with the professionals. I went to two conferences last year, but those were conferences where you didn't have to be "invited" to give a parallel talk.

Carl

Last edited: Sep 26, 2005
5. Sep 27, 2005

### Math Is Hard

Staff Emeritus
Thanks for the explanations. I like the poster concept. It's fun to walk around and "browse" and decide what you're most interested in before (or in lieu of) committing to a full-on slideshow and lecture.
Carl, congrats on getting invited to participate. I think that's just super! Have you worked out your display plans yet?

6. Oct 16, 2005

### CarlB

I've written up a set of poster pages for presentation at the PANIC conference.

"Particle Symmetry Breaking in Density Matrix Formalism with Hestenes' Geometric Algebra"
http://brannenworks.com/PPANIC05.pdf

14 pages, pdf

Of course, any comments are appreciated.

Carl

7. Oct 17, 2005

### Ratzinger

Hi Carl!

Do you mind explaining the importance of clifford algebra for physics. (Just a few sentences) I just heard here and there that's it's such beautiful math and a powerful language for doing physics with. Any good resources, links, books.

Thanks

8. Oct 20, 2005

### CarlB

Take a look at the Geometric Algebra thread over in the General Physics forum:

The above is for Geometric Algebra, rather than Clifford algebra, but it includes links that will help.

What geometric algebra does is to unite scalars, vectors, pseudo vectors, and pseudo scalars into the same object. While this seems insane, it is, in fact, what is already done in the Dirac matrices that describe the electron / positron. You can extend the same reasoning to multiple dimensions using Clifford algebra, and also to spaces with different signatures.

The main advantage is that it reduces the number of objects you have to carry around.

My hope is to reduce QM and general relativity to the same equation, and to have that equation basically be something like

$$\nabla \; \Psi = 0$$

or actually, a nonlinear generalization of the above.

Carl

Last edited: Oct 20, 2005
9. Oct 23, 2005

### CarlB

At the last minute, I realized my poster had, uh, diverged from the original abstract so I rewrote it to indicate the connection to the Euclidean gravitation theory written in Geometric Algebra by Lasenby, Doran and Gull. I also added a sample calculation showing how the method of breaking symmetry results in charged particles with exponentially differing masses as in the pattern of charges among the leptons (i.e. anti / neutrino being both chargeless and lighter than the electron/positron which are opposite in charge).

The new poster is here:
http://brannenworks.com/PPANIC05.pdf

Carl