Extended noncommutative Minkowski spacetimes and hybrid gauge symmetries

Abstract

We study the Lie bialgebra structures that can be built on the one-dimensional central extension of the Poincaré and (A)dS algebras in (1+1) dimensions. These central extensions admit more than one interpretation, but the simplest one is that they describe the symmetries of (the noncommutative deformation of) an Abelian gauge theory, U(1) or SO(2) on Minkowski or (A)dS spacetime. We show that this highlights the possibility that the algebra of functions on the gauge bundle becomes noncommutative. This is a new way in which the Coleman–Mandula theorem could be circumvented by noncommutative structures, and it is related to a mixing of spacetime and gauge symmetry generators when they act on tensor-product states. We obtain all Lie bialgebra structures on centrally-extended Poincaré and (A)dS which are coisotropic w.r.t. the Lorentz algebra, and therefore admit the construction of a noncommutative principal gauge bundle on a quantum homogeneous spacetime. It is shown that several different types of hybrid noncommutativity between the spacetime and gauge coordinates are allowed. In one of these cases, an alternative interpretation of the central extension leads to a new description of the well-known canonical noncommutative spacetime as the quantum homogeneous space of a quantum Poincaré algebra.