Physics Letters B 738 (2014) 405–411
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Conformal Newton–Hooke algebras, Niederer’s transformation
and
Pais–Uhlenbeck oscillator
Krzysztof Andrzejewski
Department of Computer Science, University of Łód
´
z, Pomorska 149/153, 90-236 Łód
´
z, Poland
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
20 September 2014
Received
in revised form 30 September
2014
Accepted
3 October 2014
Available
online 8 October 2014
Editor: M.
Cveti
ˇ
c
Dynamical systems invariant under the action of the l-conformal Newton–Hooke algebras are constructed
by the method of nonlinear realizations. The relevant first order Lagrangians together with the
corresponding Hamiltonians are found. The relation to the Galajinsky and Masterov [24] approach as well
as the higher derivatives formulation is discussed. The generalized Niederer’s transformation is presented
which relates the systems under consideration to those invariant under the action of the l-conformal
Galilei algebra [25]. As a nice application of these results an analogue of Niederer’s transformation, on
the Hamiltonian level, for the Pais–Uhlenbeck oscillator is constructed.
© 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
The Newton–Hooke algebra is a generalization of the Galilei one
to the case of nonvanishing cosmological constant leading to the
universal cosmological repulsion or attraction (see, e.g., [1–3]). It
is derived from the (anti) de Sitter algebra by the nonrelativis-
tic
contraction in a similar way as the Galilei algebra is obtained
from the Poincaré one. The main difference between Galilei and
the Newton–Hooke algebras is that in the latter case the structure
relations involving the generators of time and space translations
yield the Galilei boosts: [H, P
i
] =±
1
R
2
K
i
. The positive constant R
is
called the characteristic time (and is related to the radius of
the parent (anti) de Sitter space). The upper/lower sign above is
realized in nonrelativistic spacetime with the negative/positive cos-
mological
constant Λ =∓
1
R
2
.
Conformal extensions of the Galilei and Newton–Hooke algebras
have recently attracted considerable interest, mostly in the context
of the nonrelativistic AdS/CFT correspondence (see [4–6] and the
references therein). Finite-dimensional extensions are parameter-
ized
by a positive half-integer l [7–10], which justifies their name:
l-conformal algebras. The dynamical realizations of the l-conformal
Galilei and Newton–Hooke algebras involve, in general, higher
derivatives terms (see, e.g., [11–18]). However, it is also possible
(using the method of nonlinear realizations [19–21]) to construct
invariant dynamics involving only second derivatives [22–24]. The
E-mail address: k-andrzejewski@uni.lodz.pl.
method proposed in Refs. [22–24] allows for elegant and algorith-
mic
construction of invariant dynamical equations. However, there
remains an open problem if they admit Lagrangian and Hamilto-
nian
formalism. In Ref. [25] it has been shown that this is possible
for the case of the l-conformal Galilei algebra.
In
the present paper, first, we apply the method developed in
[25] to the case of the l-conformal Newton–Hooke algebra and we
construct the invariant dynamics in terms of the first order La-
grangian
and Hamiltonian formalism (Sections 2 and 3). Moreover,
we compare our approach with the one reported in Ref. [24] as
well as with the Pais–Uhlenbeck theory (Section 4).
The second part of the paper is devoted to the problem of
Niederer’s-type transformations. In Section 5 we construct an anal-
ogy of
the celebrated Niederer’s transformation [26] for our ap-
proach,
and we show that it leads to the results in [25] obtained
for the l-conformal Galilei algebra; the relevance of Niederer’s
transformation in the context of the both algebras, for the case
l =
1
2
, was also discussed in Ref. [27]. On the other hand, on the La-
grangian
level, the generalization of Niederer’s transformation has
been also extensively studied for the Pais–Uhlenbeck system with
odd frequencies (i.e., frequencies proportional to the consecutive
odd integers); see, e.g., [28–30]. However, its Hamiltonian coun-
terpart
seems to be more involved due to the lack of the direct
transition to the Hamiltonian formalism for a theory with higher
derivatives. We solve this problem and give (see, Section 6) the
explicit form of the canonical transformation which relates the
Pais–Uhlenbeck Hamiltonian (with odd frequencies) to the one for
the free higher derivatives theory.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2014.10.008
0370-2693/
© 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.