Two-Time Physics with Gravitational and Gauge Field Backgrounds

It is shown that all possible gravitational, gauge and other interactions experienced by particles in ordinary d-dimensions (one-time) can be described in the language of two-time physics in a spacetime with d + 2 dimensions. This is obtained by generalizing the worldline formulation of two-time physics by including background fields. A given two-time model, with a fixed set of background fields, can be gauged fixed from d+2 dimensions to (d− 1)+1 dimensions to produce diverse one-time dynamical models, all of which are dually related to each other under the underlying gauge symmetry of the unified two-time theory. To satisfy the gauge symmetry of the two-time theory the background fields must obey certain coupled differential equations that are generally covariant and gauge invariant in the target d + 2 dimensional spacetime. The gravitational background obeys a null homothety condition while the gauge field obeys a differential equation that generalizes a similar equation derived by Dirac in 1936. Explicit solutions to these coupled equations show that the usual gravitational, gauge, and other interactions in d dimensions may be viewed as embedded in the higher d+2 dimensional space, thus displaying higher spacetime symmetries that otherwise remain hidden. This research was partially supported by the US. Department of Energy under grant number DE-FG0384ER40168.