in what sense is our universe "close to a supersymmetric conformal fixed point"?
What I had in mind was starting at our point in moduli space and moving to the nearby point where the cosmological constant is zero. If I'm not mistaken, the theory there has exact superconformal symmetry? Or maybe some of Banks' more speculative ideas are starting to mix together in my head with more widely agreed-upon results.
I probably should not have called it a "fixed point" as that would imply there is some distance you're taking to zero or infinity. But isn't any CFT a fixed point in some sense... as in, there is a way to get to it by starting with a theory that has some distance scale and taking it to zero? This reminds me: have you ever noticed this paper?
No, but just looking at the abstract it sounds interesting. I mentioned above that you get "extra symmetries" at a critical point. But you also get enhanced gauged symmetry at a self T-dual point in string theory... a similarity I'd never thought of before. It doesn't mean they're necessarily connected, but that would be pretty crazy (in a good way) if they were!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-04-10 03:40 am (UTC)in what sense is our universe "close to a supersymmetric conformal fixed point"?
What I had in mind was starting at our point in moduli space and moving to the nearby point where the cosmological constant is zero. If I'm not mistaken, the theory there has exact superconformal symmetry? Or maybe some of Banks' more speculative ideas are starting to mix together in my head with more widely agreed-upon results.
I probably should not have called it a "fixed point" as that would imply there is some distance you're taking to zero or infinity. But isn't any CFT a fixed point in some sense... as in, there is a way to get to it by starting with a theory that has some distance scale and taking it to zero?
This reminds me: have you ever noticed this paper?
No, but just looking at the abstract it sounds interesting. I mentioned above that you get "extra symmetries" at a critical point. But you also get enhanced gauged symmetry at a self T-dual point in string theory... a similarity I'd never thought of before. It doesn't mean they're necessarily connected, but that would be pretty crazy (in a good way) if they were!