Roger Penrose: Twistor Theory in a Cosmological Setting

Note: This first part of the lecture of Roger Penrose starts right after the end of Georg Wikman's lecture and ends before the end of the video. As a result, the period  for Dr. Penrose's lecture in this video is from 15m15s to about 1h00min.



Abstract



Twistor theory provides a non-local formalism for physics which is particularly well suited (though not exclusively) to conformally invariant physics. Thus, massless particles in Minkowski space and, for example, the high-energy limit of strong-interaction physics (of considerable relevance to LHC) are situations where twistors are particularly valuable. Yet there remain deep problems (to do with mass, gravitational interactions, etc.). The observational input from cosmology that there appears to be a positive cosmological constant (or equivalent) suggests a modification of the standard Poincare-invariant twistor theory to one in which there is a complex symplectic structure. This leads to a new perspective on asymptotic twistors and the “googly problem” in a general cosmological setting.

Source: http://www.archmathsciphil.com/askloster-symposium/2008/abst...

Twistor theory provides a non-local formalism for physics which is particularly well suited (though not exclusively) to conformally invariant physics. Thus, massless particles in Minkowski space and, for example, the high-energy limit of strong-interaction physics (of considerable relevance to LHC) are situations where twistors are particularly valuable. Yet there remain deep problems (to do with mass, gravitational interactions, etc.). The observational input from cosmology that there appears to be a positive cosmological constant (or equivalent) suggests a modification of the standard Poincare-invariant twistor theory to one in which there is a complex symplectic structure. This leads to a new perspective on asymptotic twistors and the “googly problem” in a general cosmological setting.



Source: http://www.archmathsciphil.com/askloster-symposium/2008/abst...