Deformed Spacetime: Geometrizing Interactions in Four and Five Dimensions (Electronic book text)

This volume provides a detailed discussion of the mathematical aspects and the physical applications of a new geometrical structure of space-time, based on a generalization ('deformation') of the usual Minkowski space, as supposed to be endowed with a metric whose coefficients depend on the energy. Such a formalism (Deformed Special Relativity, DSR) allows one to account for breakdown of local Lorentz invariance in the usual, special-relativistic meaning (however, Lorentz invariance is recovered in a generalized sense); to provide an effective geometrical description of the four fundamental interactions (electromagnetic, weak, strong and gravitational). Moreover, the four-dimensional energy-dependent space-time is just a manifestation of a larger, five-dimensional space in which energy plays the role of a fifth (non-compactified) dimension. This new five-dimensional scheme (Deformed Relativity in Five Dimensions, DR5) represents a true generalization of the usual Kaluza-Klein (KK) formalism.