Modern Trends of Lorentz Symmetry and Lorentz Violation

Dear Colleagues,

Physical laws are Lorentz-covariant among inertial frames; namely, the form of a physical law is invariant under the Lorentz group of spacetime transformations. The Lorentz symmetry sets a fundamental constraint for physical theories and has been well incorporated in the Standard Model of particle physics. It is thus very crucial to investigate its fundamentals and its potential breaking, which would help identify the underlying physics beyond the Standard Model.

Modern precision experiments designed to test the Lorentz symmetry and the Lorentz violation have achieved spectacularly high sensitivities that demand the deepest knowledge at the Planck-scale and challenge current theories of quantum gravity. Because Lorentz symmetry is almost perfect, the theoretical framework that contains Lorentz-violating effects must necessarily modify some of the basic concepts in fundamental physics. Therefore, current research trends of the Lorentz symmetry lead to two different but related perspectives. One the one hand, a considerable amount of efforts has been spent on axiomatizing physical kinematics. These works drive us to face the problems of making fundamental physics more mathematically rigorous and logically reasonable. For example, relaxing the space isotropy can yield the Very Special Relativity, a subgroup of the Lorentz group sufficient to provide all the standard predictions in special relativity. One the other, without significantly altering the existing fundamental assumptions, effective field theories have been developed to predict observable Lorentz-violating effects. For example, the Standard Model Extension (SME) includes all possible Lorentz-violating effects but preserve the field-theoretical gauge symmetries. The SME can also contain gravitational effects and thus becomes a useful workhorse for studying phenomenological quantum gravity.

In this Special Issue of Symmetry, we solicit both fundamental and extensional research works following the modern trends in Lorentz symmetry and Lorentz violation. We expect the completed issue can provide an overview of current theoretical and experimental efforts in understanding one of the most treasured Lorentz-symmetry physics.

Prof. Dr. Sheng-Der Chao
Guest Editor

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