Lifshitz symmetry: Lie algebras, spacetimes and particles

Abstract

We study and classify Lie algebras, homogeneous spacetimes and coadjoint orbits (“particles”) of Lie groups generated by spatial rotations, temporal and spatial translations and an additional scalar generator. As a first step we classify Lie algebras of this type in arbitrary dimension. Among them is the prototypical Lifshitz algebra, which motivates this work and the name “Lifshitz Lie algebras”. We classify homogeneous spacetimes of Lifshitz Lie groups. Depending on the interpretation of the additional scalar generator, these spacetimes fall into three classes:1. (d+2)-dimensional Lifshitz spacetimes which have one additional holographic direction;2. (d+1)-dimensional Lifshitz-Weyl spacetimes which can be seen as the boundary geometry of the spacetimes in (1) and where the scalar generator is interpreted as an anisotropic dilation;3. and (d+1)-dimensional aristotelian spacetimes with one scalar charge, including exotic fracton-like symmetries that generalise multipole algebras.We also classify the possible central extensions of Lifshitz Lie algebras and we discuss the homogeneous symplectic manifolds of Lifshitz Lie groups in terms of coadjoint orbits.