On Gravity: Remembrance of the
Association Between a Guru and His
Student/Colleague
Titus K. Mathew
Abstract In 1988, Prof. K Babu Jospeh and Prof. M Sabir have reformulated the Einstein’s gravity as a flat space gauge theory of U (2) × U (2) symmetry. This becomes
an important step towards the dream of creating the quantum version of gravity. We
are presenting a brief review of their paper.
Keywords Gravity · Space–time · Euclidean geometry · Riemannian geometry
1 Introduction
One of the major areas of research in which Prof. Babu Joseph and his students,
especially with Prof. M Sabir, pursued is gravity. Prof. Sabir was one among the
first batch students of Prof. Babu Joseph. After taking Ph.D., Prof. Sabir joined as a
faculty in the Department of Physics. Together they started working on gravity some
time in 1984. The major problem that prevailed then, now also, is the merging of
the classical gravity with quantum mechanics, in short quantum gravity theory. The
classical theory by Einstein is a highly non-linear one, and moreover the fundamental
variable is the metric or say the geometry of space–time itself, which rendered the
major difficulty in achieving a well-defined quantum version of the classical theory
of gravity. In this article, I plan to make a brief review, first about the Einstein theory
of gravity and then about the magnificent paper published by these eminent people
on the reformulation of gravity using gauge field theory, which becomes a classic
approach that paved one of the ways towards a quantum gravity theory.
T. K. Mathew (B)
Department of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi, Kerala, India
e-mail: tituskmathew@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
K. S. Sreelatha and V. Jacob (eds.), Modern Perspectives in Theoretical Physics,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9313-0_5
61
Association Between a Guru and His
Student/Colleague
Titus K. Mathew
Abstract In 1988, Prof. K Babu Jospeh and Prof. M Sabir have reformulated the Einstein’s gravity as a flat space gauge theory of U (2) × U (2) symmetry. This becomes
an important step towards the dream of creating the quantum version of gravity. We
are presenting a brief review of their paper.
Keywords Gravity · Space–time · Euclidean geometry · Riemannian geometry
1 Introduction
One of the major areas of research in which Prof. Babu Joseph and his students,
especially with Prof. M Sabir, pursued is gravity. Prof. Sabir was one among the
first batch students of Prof. Babu Joseph. After taking Ph.D., Prof. Sabir joined as a
faculty in the Department of Physics. Together they started working on gravity some
time in 1984. The major problem that prevailed then, now also, is the merging of
the classical gravity with quantum mechanics, in short quantum gravity theory. The
classical theory by Einstein is a highly non-linear one, and moreover the fundamental
variable is the metric or say the geometry of space–time itself, which rendered the
major difficulty in achieving a well-defined quantum version of the classical theory
of gravity. In this article, I plan to make a brief review, first about the Einstein theory
of gravity and then about the magnificent paper published by these eminent people
on the reformulation of gravity using gauge field theory, which becomes a classic
approach that paved one of the ways towards a quantum gravity theory.
T. K. Mathew (B)
Department of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi, Kerala, India
e-mail: tituskmathew@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
K. S. Sreelatha and V. Jacob (eds.), Modern Perspectives in Theoretical Physics,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9313-0_5
61