light cones - 2023 ACF Nationals

Question

An event that lies outside of one of these constructs is spacelike relative to the event that defines it. For 10 points each:

[10m] Name these constructs that are formed by the 45-degree lines emanating from an event on diagrams whose temporal axis is scaled by c.

ANSWER: light cones [accept null cones; prompt on cones]

[10e] Light cones help visualize causal relationships in this theory. A foundational postulate of this theory says that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames.

ANSWER: special relativity [or special theory of relativity; or SR; prompt on relativity]

[10h] One of these statements specifies that the spectrum of the four-momentum must lie within the closed future light cone. The Haag–Kastler framework and these statements both express the properties required to construct mathematically sound relativistic quantum field theories.

ANSWER: Wightman (“WHITE-mun”) axioms [or Gårding–Wightman axioms]

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Summary


2023 ACF Nationals	04/22/2023	Y	22	17.27	86%	77%	9%

Data


Duke A	Illinois A	10	10	0	20
Georgia Tech B	Brown A	10	10	0	20
WUSTL B	Ohio State A	10	10	0	20
Rutgers A	Minnesota A	0	0	0	0
Rutgers B	McGill A	0	0	0	0
Purdue A	WUSTL A	10	10	0	20
Chicago A	Vanderbilt A	10	10	10	30
Chicago B	Cornell A	10	10	0	20
Cornell B	Northwestern A	10	10	0	20
Michigan A	Florida B	10	10	0	20
Texas A	UC Berkeley B	10	10	0	20
Yale B	Indiana A	10	10	0	20
Yale A	Columbia A	10	10	0	20
Toronto A	Columbia B	10	10	0	20
Georgia Tech A	Chicago C	10	10	0	20
UC Berkeley A	Iowa State A	0	10	0	10
Penn A	Maryland A	10	10	0	20
MIT A	Penn State A	10	10	0	20
Stanford A	NYU A	10	10	10	30
Minnesota B	Claremont A	0	10	0	10
Harvard A	Houston A	0	0	0	0
North Carolina A	Virginia A	10	10	0	20