Defining physics at imaginary time: reflection positivity for certain Riemannian manifolds A thesis presented by Christian Coolidge Anderson
[email protected] (978) 204-7656 to the Department of Mathematics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an honors degree. Advised by Professor Arthur Jaffe. Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts March 2013 Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Axiomatic quantum field theory 2 3 Definition of reflection positivity 4 4 Reflection positivity on a Riemannian manifold M 7 4.1 Function space E over M ..................... 7 4.2 Reflection on M .......................... 10 4.3 Reflection positive inner product on E+ ⊂ E . 11 5 The Osterwalder-Schrader construction 12 5.1 Quantization of operators . 13 5.2 Examples of quantizable operators . 14 5.3 Quantization domains . 16 5.4 The Hamiltonian . 17 6 Reflection positivity on the level of group representations 17 6.1 Weakened quantization condition . 18 6.2 Symmetric local semigroups . 19 6.3 A unitary representation for Glor . 20 7 Construction of reflection positive measures 22 7.1 Nuclear spaces . 23 7.2 Construction of nuclear space over M . 24 7.3 Gaussian measures . 27 7.4 Construction of Gaussian measure . 28 7.5 OS axioms for the Gaussian measure . 30 8 Reflection positivity for the Laplacian covariance 31 9 Reflection positivity for the Dirac covariance 34 9.1 Introduction to the Dirac operator . 35 9.2 Proof of reflection positivity . 38 10 Conclusion 40 11 Appendix A: Cited theorems 40 12 Acknowledgments 41 1 Introduction Two concepts dominate contemporary physics: relativity and quantum me- chanics. They unite to describe the physics of interacting particles, which live in relativistic spacetime while exhibiting quantum behavior.