Bibcode
Collins, John; Perez, Alejandro; Sudarsky, Daniel
Bibliographical reference
eprint arXiv:hep-th/0603002
Advertised on:
2
2006
Citations
38
Refereed citations
27
Description
The notion that gravitation might lead to a breakdown of standard
space-time structure at small distances, and that this might affect the
propagation of ordinary particles has led to a program to search for
violations of Lorentz invariance as a probe of quantum gravity.
Initially it was expected that observable macroscopic effects caused by
microscopic violations of Lorentz invariance would necessarily be
suppressed by at least one power of the small ratio between the Planck
length and macroscopic lengths. Here we discuss the implications of the
fact that this expectation is in contradiction with standard properties
of radiative corrections in quantum field theories. In normal field
theories, radiative corrections in the presence of microscopic Lorentz
violation give macroscopic Lorentz violation that is suppressed only by
the size of Standard Model couplings, in clear conflict with
observation. In general, this conclusion can only be avoided by extreme
fine tuning of the parameters of the theory.