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Quantum Theory, Noncommutativity and Heuristics

Noncommutative field theories are a class of theories beyond the standard model of elementary particle physics. Their importance may be summarized in two facts. Firstly as field theories on noncommutative spacetimes they come with natural regularization parameters. Secondly they are related in a natural way to theories of quantum gravity which typically give rise to noncommutative spacetimes. Therefore noncommutative field theories can shed light on the problem of quantizing gravity. An attractive aspect of noncommutative field theories is that they can be formulated so as to preserve spacetime symmetries and to avoid the introduction of irrelevant degrees freedom and so they provide models of consistent fundamental theories. In these notes we review the formulation of symmetry aspects of noncommutative field theories on the simplest type of noncommutative spacetime, the Moyal plane. We discuss violations of Lorentz, P, CP, PT and CPT symmetries as well as causality. Some experimentally detectable signatures of these violations involving Planck scale physics of the early universe and linear response finite temperature field theory are also presented.