Sunday, June 17, 2012

Neutron anomaly as evidence for many-sheeted space-time





There was a very interesting article about magnetic anomaly UCN trapping. UCN is a shorthand for ultra-cold neutrons. The article had a somewhat hypish title Magnetic anomaly in UCN trapping: signal for neutrons oscillations to parallel world?. Perhaps this was explains why I did not bother to look at it at the first time I saw it.

As I saw again the popular story hyping the article, I realized that the anomaly - if real - could provide a direct evidence for the transitions of neutrons between parallel space-time sheets of many-sheeted space-time. TGD of course predicts that this phenomenon is completely general applying to all kinds of particles.

The interpretation of authors is that ultra-cold neutrons oscillate between parallel worlds- albeit in different sense as in TGD. The authors describe this oscillation using same mathematical model as describing neutrino oscillations. What would be observed would be that in statistical sense neutrons in the beam disappear and reappear periodically. The model predicts that the frequency for this is just the Larmor frequency ω = μ • B/2 for the precession of spin of neutron in magnetic field. The authors claim that just this is observed and the interpretation is somewhat outlandish looking. Standard model gauge group is doubled: all particles have exact mirror copies with same quantum numbers. This of course is extremely inelegant interpretation. Something much more elegant is needed.

TGD based description of the situation


TGD allows to understand the finding in terms of many-sheeted space-time and one ends up with a phenomenological model similar to that of authors. Now however the phenomenon is predicted to be completely general applying to all kinds of particles and does not require the weird doubling of standard model symmetries.


Imagine the presence of two space-time sheets (or even more of them) carrying magnetic fields which decompose to flux tubes.


  1. Suppose that neutron is topologically condensed in one of these flux tubes. What happens when the flux tubes are "above each other" in the sense that that their Minkowski space projections intersect and the flux tubes are extremely near to each other: the distance is of order CP2 size of order 104 Planck lengths. It took long time to take seriously the obvious: neutrons topologically condense on both space-time sheets and experience the sum of the magnetic fields in these regions. This actually allows to overcome the basic objection against TGD due to the fact that all classical gauge fields are expressible in terms of CP2 coordinates and their gradients so that enormously powerful constraints between classical gauge fields are satisfied and linear superposition of fields is lost. In many-sheeted space-time this superposition is replaced with the superposition of their effects in multiple topological condensation,

  2. In the regions where the intersection of M4 projections of flux tubes is empty, topological condensation takes place on either space-time sheet.


  3. What happens when one has neutrons propagating along flux tube 1 characterized by magnetic field B1 arrive to a region where flux tube 2 of magnetic field B2 resides? In the intersection region the neutrons experience the field B1+B2 in good approximation. The interaction energy E=μ B• σ, where B is the magnetic field and σ is the spin of neutron. In flux tube 1 has B=B1, in flux tube 2 one has B=B2 and in the intersection region B=B1+B2. It can happen that neutron arriving along flux tube 1 continues its travel along flux tube 2.

  4. Magnetic fields in question actually consists of large number of nearly parallel flux tubes and the travel of neutron is a series of segments: Bi1→ B1+B2 → Bi2→ ..... As if neutron would make jumps between parallel worlds. Now these worlds are geometrically parallel rather than identifiable as copies in tensor product of standard model gauge groups.

A phenological description predicting the probabilities for the transitions between the parallel worlds assignable to the two magnetic fields could be based on simple Hamiltonian used to describe also neutrino mixing. Hamiltonian is sum of spin Hamiltonians Hi =μ Bi• σ and of non-diagonal mixing term ε. H= H1⊕ H2 + ε The diagonal term Hi are non-vanishing in the nonintersecting region i and non-diagonal describing what happens in the intersecting regions. Just this description was used by the authors of the article to parametrize the observed anomaly.

One can test this interpretation by introducing a third magnetic field. The interpretation of authors might force to introduce even third copy of standard model gauge group;-).

Amusing co-incidence

What is so amusing that the magnetic field used in the experiments was .2 Gauss. It is exactly the nominal value of the endogenous magnetic field needed to explain the strange quantal effects of radiation at cyclotron frequencies of biologically important ions on vertebrate brain. The frequencies are extremely low - in EEG range - and corresponding thermal energies are 10 orders below thermal energy so that standard quantum mechanics predicts no effects. The explanation assumes Bend=.2 GeV containing dark variants of these ions with so large Planck constants that the cyclotron energies are above thermal energy at physiological temperatures. Why experimentalists happened to use just this .2 Gauss magnetic field which is 2/5 of the the nominal value of the Earth's magnetic field BE=.5 Gauss? If I were a paranoid, I would swear that the experimentalists were well aware of TGD;-). Of course they were not! One cannot be aware of TGD in a company of respectable scientists and even less in respectable science journals;-)!

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