Testing noncommutative spacetimes and violations of the Pauli exclusion principle with underground experiments

We propose to deploy limits that arise from different tests of the Pauli Exclusion Principle: i) to provide theories of quantum gravity with experimental guidance; ii) to distinguish, among the plethora of possible models, the ones that are already ruled out by current data; iii) to direct future attempts to be in accordance with experimental constraints. We first review experimental bounds on nuclear processes forbidden by the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which have been derived by several experimental collaborations making use of various detector materials. Distinct features of the experimental devices entail sensitivities on the constraints hitherto achieved that may differ from one another by several orders of magnitude. We show that with choices of these limits, well-known examples of flat noncommutative space-time instantiations of quantum gravity can be heavily constrained, and eventually ruled out. We devote particular attention to the analysis of the k-Minkowski and theta-Minkowski noncommutative spacetimes. These are deeply connected to some scenarios in string theory, loop quantum gravity, and noncommutative geometry. We emphasize that the severe constraints on these quantum spacetimes, although they cannot rule out theories of top-down quantum gravity to which they are connected in various ways, provide a powerful limitation for those models. Focus on this will be necessary in the future