The Landscape of Theoretical Physics: A Global View

Abstract

This is a book for those who would like to learn something about special and general relativity beyond the usual textbooks, about quantum field theory, the elegant Fock-Schwinger-Stueckelberg proper time formalism, the elegant description of geometry by means of Clifford algebra, about the fascinating possibilities the latter algebra offers in reformulating the existing physical theories, and quantizing them in a natural way. It is shown how Clifford algebra provides much more: it provides room for new physics, with the prospects of resolving certain long standing puzzles. The theory of branes and the idea of how a 3-brane might represent our world is discussed in detail. Much attention is paid to the elegant geometric theory of branes which employs the infinite dimensional space of functions describing branes. Clifford algebra is generalized to the infinite dimensional spaces. In short, this is a book for anybody who would like to explore how the "theory of everything" might possibly be formulated. The theory that would describe all the known phenomena, could not be formulated without taking into account "all" the theoretical tools which are available. Foundations of those tools and their functional interrelations are described in the book. Note: This book was published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2001.The body of the posted version is identical to the published one, except for corrections of misprints, and some minor revisions that I have found necessary.

Tachyon Behavior Due to Mass-State Transitions at Scattering Vertices

“…Mass state transitions at scattering vertices can be used to test parametrized relativistic quantum theory (pRQT), a manifestly covariant quantum theory with an invariant evolution parameter. Introductions to pRQT are presented by myself [1,2], Pavšič [3,4], and Horwitz [5]. A review of relativistic classical mechanics and electrodynamics in the parametrized framework is given by Land and Horwitz [6].…”

“…A review of relativistic classical mechanics and electrodynamics in the parametrized framework is given by Land and Horwitz [6]. In [7], I developed a parametrized relativistic quantum field theory that was extended by Pavšič (see [3], Chapter 1) to include canonical quantization and creation/annihilation operators. Horwitz ([5], Chapter 3) discussed Fock space and quantum field theory.…”

“…Additional topics include branes and quantized fields [4,8]. I [1,2] and Pavšič [3,4,9] discussed the role of action-at-a-distance, nonlocality, and tachyons in pRQT.…”