The geometry of point particles

DOI10.1098/RSPA.2001.0913MaRDI QIDQ4545375zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Paul Sutcliffe, Michael Atiyah

Publication date 15 August 2002

Published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0105179

zbMATH Keywords

geometrypolyhedraenergy minimizationpoint particles

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Discriminantal varieties and configuration spaces in algebraic topology (55R80) Applications of variational problems in infinite-dimensional spaces to the sciences (58E50) Differential geometric methods, including holonomy, Berry and Hannay phases, Aharonov-Bohm effect, etc. in quantum theory (81Q70)

Abstract: There is a very natural map from the configuration space of n distinct points in Euclidean 3-space into the flag manifold U(n)/U(1)^n, which is compatible with the action of the symmetric group. The map is well-defined for all configurations of points provided a certain conjecture holds, for which we provide numerical evidence. We propose some additional conjectures, which imply the first, and test these numerically. Motivated by the above map, we define a geometrical multi-particle energy function and compute the energy minimizing configurations for up to 32 particles. These configurations comprise the vertices of polyhedral structures which are dual to those found in a number of complicated physical theories, such as Skyrmions and fullerenes. Comparisons with 2-particle and 3-particle energy functions are made. The planar restriction and the generalization to hyperbolic 3-space are also investigated.

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