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Back to the future: Causality on a moving braneworld

Brane observers executing appropriate motion through a partially compactified Lorentz invariant bulk spacetime, such as M 4 × S 1 , can send signals along the brane that are instantaneous or even travel backward in time. Nevertheless, causality in the braneworld remains intact. We establish these results, which follow from superluminal signal propagation reported in Greene et al. [Superluminal propagation on a moving braneworld, Phys. Rev. D 106, 085001 (2022).], through classical analysis and then extend our reasoning by examining quantum mechanical microcausality. Finally, one implication is the capacity for real time communication across arbitrarily large distances.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Quantum Mechanics of a Spherically Symmetric Causal Diamond in Minkowski Spacetime

We construct the phase space of a spherically symmetric causal diamond in ( d + 2 )-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. Utilizing the covariant phase space formalism, we identify the relevant degrees of freedom that localize to the d -dimensional bifurcate horizon and, upon canonical quantization, determine their commutators. On this phase space, we find two Iyer-Wald charges. The first of these charges, proportional to the area of the causal diamond, is responsible for shifting the null time along the horizon and has been well documented in the literature. The second charge is much less understood, being integrable for d ≥ 2 only if we allow for field-dependent diffeomorphisms and is responsible for changing the size of the causal diamond. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Causality violations in realistic simulations of heavy-ion collisions

Causality is violated in the early stages of state-of-the-art heavy-ion hydrodynamic simulations. Such violations are present in up to 75% of the fluid cells in the initial time and only after 2–3 fm/c of evolution do we find that 50% of the fluid cells are definitely causal. Superluminal propagation reaches up to 15% the speed of light in some of the fluid cells. The inclusion of pre-equilibrium evolution significantly reduces the number of acausal cells. Here our findings suggests that relativistic causality may place constraints on the available parameter space of heavy-ion collision simulations when factored into more thorough statistical analyses.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗