Dimensional deconstruction

In theoretical physics, dimensional deconstruction is a method to construct d-dimensional theories that behave as higher-dimensional theories in a certain range of energies. The resulting theory is a gauge theory whose gauge group is a direct product of many copies of the same group; each copy may be interpreted as the gauge group located at a particular point along a new, discrete, "deconstructed" (d+1)st dimension. The spectrum of matter fields is a set of bifundamental representations expressed by a quiver diagram that is analogous to lattices in lattice gauge theory.

"Deconstruction" in physics was introduced by Nima Arkani-Hamed, Andy Cohen and Howard Georgi, and independently by Christopher T. Hill, Stefan Pokorski and Jing Wang. Deconstruction is a lattice approximation to the real space of extra dimensions, while maintaining the full gauge symmetries and yields the low energy effective description of the physics. This leads to a rationale for extensions of the Standard Model based upon product gauge groups, $G\times G\times G...$, such as anticipated in "topcolor" models of electroweak symmetry breaking. The little Higgs theories are also examples of phenomenologically interesting models inspired by deconstruction. Deconstruction is used in a supersymmetric context to address the hierarchy problem and model extra dimensions. "Clock models," which have become popular in recent years in particle physics, are completely equivalent to deconstruction.

References

• Arkani-Hamed, Nima; Cohen, Andrew G.; Georgi, Howard (2001-05-21). "(De)Constructing Dimensions". Physical Review Letters. 86 (21). American Physical Society (APS): 4757–4761. arXiv:hep-th/0104005. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.86.4757. ISSN 0031-9007.
• Hill, Christopher T.; Pokorski, Stefan; Wang, Jing (2001-10-11). "Gauge invariant effective Lagrangian for Kaluza-Klein modes". Physical Review D. 64 (10). American Physical Society (APS): 105005. arXiv:hep-th/0104035. doi:10.1103/physrevd.64.105005. ISSN 0556-2821.