Yang-Baxter deformations of Minkowski spacetime

Abstract

We study Yang-Baxter deformations of 4D Minkowski spacetime. The Yang-Baxter sigma model description was originally developed for principal chiral models based on a modified classical Yang-Baxter equation. It has been extended to coset curved spaces and models based on the usual classical Yang-Baxter equation. On the other hand, for flat space, there is the obvious problem that the standard bilinear form degenerates if we employ the familiar coset Poincar\'e group/Lorentz group. Instead we consider a slice of AdS$_5$ by embedding the 4D Poincar\'e group into the 4D conformal group $SO(2,4)$. With this procedure we obtain metrics and $B$-fields as Yang-Baxter deformations which correspond to well-known configurations such as T-duals of Melvin backgrounds, Hashimoto-Sethi and Spradlin-Takayanagi-Volovich backgrounds, the T-dual of Grant space, pp-waves, and T-duals of dS$_4$ and AdS$_4$. Finally we consider a deformation with a classical $r$-matrix of Drinfeld-Jimbo type and explicitly derive the associated metric and $B$-field which we conjecture to correspond to a new integrable system.