On the unexpected fate of scientific ideas: An archeology of the Carroll group

In 1965, I published a paper, exhibiting a hitherto unknown limit of the Lorentz group, which I christened "Carroll group" due to its seemingly paradoxical physical contents. Since I saw it as more curious than relevant, I published it in French in a journal somewhat afar from the mainstre...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SciPost 2023-11-01
Series:SciPost Physics Proceedings
Online Access:https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysProc.14.006
Description
Summary:In 1965, I published a paper, exhibiting a hitherto unknown limit of the Lorentz group, which I christened "Carroll group" due to its seemingly paradoxical physical contents. Since I saw it as more curious than relevant, I published it in French in a journal somewhat afar from the mainstream of theoretical physics at that time. It was most gratifying to witness the quite unexpected favour this paper started to enjoy half a century later, so much that a so-called "Carrollian physics" is now developing, with applications in various domains of forefront theoretical physics, such as quantum gravitation, supersymmetry, string theory, etc. I offer this narrative as an example of the very diverse time scales with which scientific ideas may develop — or not.
ISSN:2666-4003