Tue, 08 Nov 2022
12:00
Virtual

Bi-twistors, G_2*, and Split-Octonions

Roger Penrose
((Oxford University))

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Abstract

Standard twistor theory involves a complex projective
3-space PT which naturally divides into two halves PT+
and PT, joined by their common 5-real-dimensional
boundary PN. However, this splitting has two quite
different basic physical interpretations, namely
positive/negative helicity and positive/negative
frequency, which ought not to be confused in the
formalism, and the notion of “bi-twistors” is introduced
to resolve this issue. It is found that quantized bi-
twistors have a previously unnoticed G2* structure,
which enables the split-octonion algebra to be directly
formulated in terms of quantized bi-twistors, once the
appropriate complex structure is incorporated.

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