Microcausality violation of scalar field on noncommutative spacetime with the time-space noncommutativity

Abstract

Quantum field theories on noncommutative spacetime have many different properties from those on commutative spacetime. In this paper, we study the microcausality of free scalar field on noncommutative spacetime. We expand the scalar field in the form of usual Lorentz invariant measure in noncommutative spacetime. Then we calculate the expectation values of the Moyal commutators for the quadratic operators, such as $\phi(x)\star\phi(x)$, $\pi({\bf x},t)\star\pi({\bf x},t)$, $\partial_{i}\phi({\bf x},t)\star\partial_{i}\phi({\bf x},t)$, and $\partial_{i}\phi({\bf x},t)\star\pi({\bf x},t)$. We obtain that for space-space noncommutativity, i.e., $\theta^{0i}=0$ in $\theta^{\mu\nu}$, microcausality of free scalar field on noncommutative spacetime is satisfied. For time-space noncommutativity, i.e., $\theta^{0i}\neq0$ in $\theta^{\mu\nu}$, microcausality of free scalar field on noncommutative spacetime is violated.