One-loop unitarity of scalar field theories on Poincare invariant commutative nonassociative spacetimes

Abstract

We study scalar field theories on Poincare invariant commutative nonassociative spacetimes. We compute the one-loop self-energy diagrams in the ordinary path integral quantization scheme with Feynman's prescription, and find that the Cutkosky rule is satisfied. This property is in contrast with that of noncommutative field theory, since it is known that noncommutative field theory with space/time noncommutativity violates unitarity in the above standard scheme, and the quantization procedure will necessarily become complicated to obtain a sensible Poincare invariant noncommutative field theory. We point out a peculiar feature of the non-locality in our nonassociative field theories, which may explain the property of the unitarity distinct from noncommutative field theories. Thus commutative nonassociative field theories seem to contain physically interesting field theories on deformed spacetimes.