Date of Award:

12-2022

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Physics

Committee Chair(s)

James Wheeler

Committee

James Wheeler

Committee

Oscar Varela

Committee

Maria Rodriguez

Committee

Mark Fels

Committee

Boyd Edwards

Abstract

There are four basic forces in nature: the electromagnetic force, which accounts for interactions of particles with charges; the weak force, which is responsible for radioactive decay; the strong force, which holds the particles inside a nucleus tightly bound together; and the gravitational force, which is responsible for keeping us on our beautiful planet, Earth and holding together our entire solar system. Physicists have been on the hunt for a theory that can single-handedly explain all these forces under the same underlying mathematical formulation. So far, physicists have suceeded in unifying the electromagnetic and weak forces in what is called the electroweak theory. Some ways are known to unify the electroweak and strong interactions using group theory, but the odd one out is really gravitational force. Gravity is explained successfully so far by Einstein’s general theory of relativity but it has seen limited quantum mechanical explanation. One possible route to full unification is string theory but we take an alternative approach. In this dissertation, we attempt to unify gravity with the electroweak interaction. We propose a graviweak theory based on a gauge field theory approach by harnessing the plethora of mathematical techniques found in biconformal gauge field theory. In this special kind of field theory, not only can we readily and easily get gravity, we simulteneously have a dual space that can accommodate the electroweak theory within the same formulation. We see that certain surprising properties of the electroweak theory such as the existence of isospin or its preference for left-handedness over right-handedness may have a natural explanation within biconformal theory.

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