$CPT$-Symmetric Kähler-Dirac Fermions

Abstract

Kähler-Dirac (KD) spinors have generated excitement in the lattice gauge theory community, as a way to (i) deal with the ``fermion doubling" problems that plague ordinary (Dirac, Majorana, or Weyl) spinors when discretized on a lattice, and (ii) help explain the structure of the standard model. But if one naively quantizes this theory in Lorentzian signature, problems arise: half the KD fields have the ``wrong sign" Lagrangian, and give rise to negative norm states. Here we propose a new resolution/interpretation: the KD field actually lives on a two-sheeted spacetime, with the sheets related by $PT$ symmetry or, alternatively, by $i\leftrightarrow-i$. And, to avoid any unphysical interactions between the two sheets, the KD field obeys a reality condition (which we call the ``KD-Majorana condition"), which forces every particle on one sheet to be accompanied by a mirror (anti-)particle on the other sheet. We discuss how the standard model fits in this framework, how the fermion (kinetic and Yukawa) terms simplify, and how it may relate to the CPT-symmetric universe model.