Physics on the Thomas Cone

Professor Vincent Rodgers

String theories provide a candidate theories for the nature of quantum gravity. However, in many ways the engineering of string theories often obscures four-dimensional access to observations. Thomas-Whitehead Gravity attempts to remedy this by extracting the feature of string theories that give them renormalizabilty, namely the VIrasoro algebra, and import it to finite dimensional manifolds. This relationship is realized through the development of the manifold and its relationship to geodesics. For a given manifold, many connections give the same geodesics so belong to the same equivalence class. The Thomas connection is a fibration over the manifold and serves as an affine connection over these equivalence classes. This is a gauge theory and The Thomas Cone is a fibration over the manifold. The consequence of this is a new field that arises, called the Diffeomorphism field, that can influence geodesics and gravitational phenomenon. It is proposed as a field theory that naturally gives rise to the inflaton, dark energy, and dark matter. We will review these features and discuss new insights related to physics on the Thomas Cone.

To participate in this event virtually via Zoom, go to https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/99570315915.