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Utah State University

All Physics Faculty Publications

1996

Conformal Group

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Scale-Invariant Phase Space And The Conformal Group, James Thomas Wheeler Jan 1996

Scale-Invariant Phase Space And The Conformal Group, James Thomas Wheeler

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The gauge bundle of the 4-dim conformal group over an 8-dim base space, called biconformal space, is shown have a consistent interpretation as a scale-invariant phase space. Specifically, we show that a classical Hamiltonian system generates a differential geometry which is necessarily biconformal, and that the classical Hamiltonian dynamics of a point particle is equivalent to the specification of a 7-dim hypersurface in flat biconformal space together with the consequent necessary existence of a set of preferred curves. The result is centrally important for establishing the physical interpretation of conformal gauging.