The importance of being light-like

The singular geometric objects associated with the space-time surface have become increasingly important in TGD framework. In particular, the recent progress has made clear that these objects might be crucial for the understanding of quantum TGD. The singular objects are associated not only with the induced metric but also with the effective metric defined by the anti-commutators of the modified gamma matrices appearing in the modified Dirac equation and determined by the Kähler action.

The singular objects associated with the induced metric

Consider first the singular objects associated with the induced metric.

1. At light-like 3-surfaces defined by wormhole throats the signature of the induced metric changes from Euclidian to Minkowskian so that 4-metric is degenerate. These surfaces are carriers of elementary particle quantum numbers and the 4-D induced metric degenerates locally to 3-D one at these surfaces.
   
   
2. Braid strands at light-like 3-surfaces are most naturally light-like curves: this correspond to the boundary condition for open strings. One can assign fermion number to the braid strands. Braid strands allow an identification as curves along which the Euclidian signature of the string world sheet in Euclidian region transforms to Minkowskian one. Number theoretic interpretation would be as a transformation of complex regions to hyper-complex regions meaning that imaginary unit i satisfying i²=-1 becomes hyper-complex unit e satisfying e²=1. The complex coordinates (z,z*) become hyper-complex coordinates (u=t+ex, v=t-ex) giving the standard light-like coordinates when one puts e=1.
   

The singular objects associated with the effective metric

There are also singular objects assignable to the effective metric. According to the simple arguments already developed, string world sheets and possibly also partonic 2-surfaces are singular objects with respect to the effective metric defined by the anti-commutators of the modified gamma matrices rather than induced gamma matrices. Therefore the effective metric seems to be much more than a mere formal structure.

1. For instance, quaternionicity of the space-time surface could allow an elegant formulation in terms of the effective metric avoiding the problems due to the Minkowski signature. This is achieved if the effective metric has Euclidian signature ε × (1,1,1,1), ε=+/- 1 or a complex counterpart of the Minkowskian signature ε (1,1,-1,-1).
   
   
2. String world sheets and perhaps also partonic 2-surfaces could be understood as singularities of the effective metric. What happens that the effective metric with Euclidian signature ε ×(1,1,1,1) transforms to the signature ε (1,1,-1,-1) (say) at string world sheet so that one would have the degenerate signature ε×(1,1,0,0) at the string world sheet.
   

   What is amazing is that this works also number theoretically. It came as a total surprise to me that the notion of hyper-quaternions as a closed algebraic structure indeed exists. The hyper-quaternionic units would be given by (1,I, iJ,iK), where i is a commuting imaginary unit satisfying i²=-1. Hyper-quaternionic numbers defined as combinations of these units with real coefficients do form a closed algebraic structure which however fails to be a number field just like hyper-complex numbers do. Note that the hyper-quaternions obtained with real coefficients from the basis (1,iI,iJ,iK) fail to form an algebra since the product is not hyper-quaternion in this sense but belongs to the algebra of complexified quaternions. The same problem is encountered in the case of hyper-octonions defined in this manner. This has been a stone in my shoe since I feel strong disrelish towards Wick rotation as a trick for moving between different signatures.
   
   

3. Could also partonic 2-surfaces correspond to this kind of singular 2-surfaces? In principle, 2-D surfaces of 4-D space intersect at discrete points just as string world sheets and partonic 2-surfaces do so that this might make sense. By complex structure the situation is algebraically equivalent to the analog of plane with non-flat metric allowing all possible signatures (ε₁,ε₂) in various regions. At light-like curve either ε₁ or ε₂ changes sign and light-like curves for these two kinds of changes can intersect as one can easily verify by drawing what happens. At the intersection point the metric is completely degenerate and simply vanishes.
   
   
4. Replacing real 2-dimensionality with complex 2-dimensionality, one obtains by the universality of algebraic dimension the same result for partonic 2-surfaces and string world sheets. The braid ends at partonic 2-surfaces representing the intersection points of 2-surfaces of this kind would have completely degenerate effective metric so that the modified gamma matrices would vanish implying that energy momentum tensor vanishes as also the induced Kähler field.
   
   
5. The effective metric suffers a local conformal scaling in the critical deformations identified in the proposed manner. Since ordinary conformal group acts on Minkowski space and leaves the boundary of light-cone invariant, one has two conformal groups. It is not however clear whether the M⁴ conformal transformations can act as symmetries in TGD, where the presence of the induced metric in Kähler action breaks M⁴ conformal symmetry. As found, also in TGD framework the Kac-Moody currents assigned to the braid strands generate Yangian: this is expected to be true also for the Kac-Moody counterparts of the conformal algebra associated with quantum criticality. On the other hand, in twistor program one encounters also two conformal groups and the space in which the second conformal group acts remains somewhat mysterious object. The Lie algebras for the two conformal groups generate the conformal Yangian and the integrands of the scattering amplitudes are Yangian invariants. Twistor approach should apply in TGD if zero energy ontology is right. Does this mean a deep connection?
   

   What is also intriguing that twistor approach in principle works in strict mathematical sense only at signatures ε × (1,1,-1-1) and the scattering amplitudes in Minkowski signature are obtained by analytic continuation. Could the effective metric give rise to the desired signature? Note that the notion of massless particle does not make sense in the signature ε × (1,1,1,1).
   

These arguments provide genuine a support for the notion of quaternionicity and suggest a connection with the twistor approach.

For more details see the new chapter The recent vision about preferred extremals and solutions of the modified Dirac equation of "Quantum TGD as Infinite-Dimensional Geometry" or the article with the same title.