A WEYL DESCRIPTION OF GRAVITY INTERACTIONS

Abstract

We compare the conventional description of the interaction of matter with the four known forces in the standard model with an alternative Weyl description in which the chiral coupling is extended to include gravity. The two are indistinguishable at the low energy classical level of equations of motion, but there are subtle differences at the quantum level when nonvanishing torsion and the Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly are taken into account. The spin current and energy-momentum of the chiral theory then contain non-Hermitian terms which are not present in the conventional theory. In the chiral alternative, CPT invariance is not automatic because chirality supersedes Hermiticity but full Lorentz invariance holds. New fermion loop processes associated with the theory are discussed together with a perturbative regularization which explicitly maintains the chiral nature and local symmetries of the theory.