March 18, 2020

Answered by: Jonathan Gorard

How do your models relate to string theory?

The precise correspondence is not yet clear, but we have several ideas. One possible point of connection lies in the evolution of what we refer to colloquially as “snake states”—sets of global states in the multiway evolution graph produced by maximally consistent sets of spacelike-separated updating events. The evolution of such a snake state corresponds to a purely relativistic evolution of the global state of the universe (since all states within the snake were produced via strictly spacelike-separated updating events, their linear superposition itself corresponds to a valid global state), with distinct snake states thus being purely branchlike-separated. The worldsheet (or, more generally, worldvolume) defined by the trajectory of a snake state through the multiway system is therefore some higher-dimensional analog of the worldline defined by the trajectory of an individual multiway eigenstate. The convergence and divergence of branch pairs in the multiway system can hence be described purely in terms of splitting and joining operations on these worldsheets, which we conjecture may be related to the splitting and joining vertices for propagators in, for instance, light-cone string field theory.