Particle physics Christmas rumor

We are not protected against particle physics rumors even during Christmas. This time the rumor was launched from the comment section of Peter Woit's blog and soon propagated to the blogs of Lubos and Phil Gibbs.

The rumor says that ATLAS has observed 5 sigma excess of like sign di-muon events. This would suggests a resonance with charge +/- 2 and muon number two. In the 3-triplet SUSY model there is a Higgs with charge 2 but the lower limit for its mass is already now around 300-400 GeV. Rumors are usually just rumors and at this time the most plausible interpretation is as a nasty joke intended to spoil the Christmas of phenomenologists. Lubos however represents a graph from a publication of ATLAS based on 2011 data giving a slight support for the rumor. The experiences during last years give strong reasons to believe that statistical fluctuation is in question. Despite this the temptation to find some explanation is irresistible.

TGD view about color allows charge 2 leptomesons

TGD color differs from that of other unified theories in the sense that colored states correspond to color partial waves in CP₂. Most of these states are extremely massive but I have proposed that leptons can appear also in color octet partial waves with light masses and there is indeed some evidence for pion like states with mass very near to 2m_L for all charged lepton generations decaying to lepton-antilepton pairs and gamma pairs also p-adically scaled up variant having masses coming as octaves of the lowest state is reported for the tau-pion (see this).

Since leptons move in triality zero color partial waves, color does not distinguish between lepton and anti-lepton so that also leptons with the same charge can in principle form a pion-like color singlet with charge +/-2. This is of course not possible for quarks. In the recent case the p-adic prime should be such that the mass for the color octet muon is 105/2 GeV which is about 2⁹m(μ), where m(μ) =105.6 MeV is the mass of muon. Therefore the color octet muons would correspond to p≈2^k, k=k(μ)-2× 9=113-18 =95, which not prime but is allowed by the p-adic length scale hypothesis.

But why just k=95? Is it an accident that the scaling factor is same as between the mass scales of the ordinary hadron physics characterized by M₁₀₇ and M₈₉ hadron physics? If one applies the same argument to tau leptons characterized by M₁₀₇, one finds that like sign tau pairs should result from pairs of M₈₉ tau leptons having mass m=512×1.776 GeV= 909 GeV. The mass of resonance would be twice this. For electron one has m= 512*.51 MeV= 261.6 MeV with resonance mass equal to 523.2 MeV. Skeptic would argue that this kind of states should have been observed for long time ago if they really exist.

Production of parallel gluon pairs from the decay of strings of M₈₉ hadron physics as source of the leptomesons?

The production mechanism would be via two-gluon intermediate states. Both gluons would decay to unbound colored lepton-antilepton pair such that the two colored leptons and two antileptons would fuse to form two like sign lepton pairs. This process favors gluons moving in parallel. The required presence of also other like sign lepton pair in the state might allow to kill the hypothesis easily.

The presence of parallel gluons could relate to the TGD explanation for the correlated charged particle pairs observed in proton proton collisions (QCD predicts quark gluon plasma and the absence of correlations) in terms of M₈₉ hadron physics (see the earlier posting). The decay of M₈₉ string like objects is expected to produce not only correlated charged pairs but also correlated gluon pairs with members moving in parallel or antiparallel manner. Parallel gluons could produce like sign di-muons and di-electrons and even pairs of like sign μ and e. In the case of ordinary hadron physics this mechanism would not be at work so that one could understand why resonances with electron number two and mass 523 MeV have not been observed earlier.

Even leptons belonging to different generations could in principle form this kind of states and Phil Gibbs has represented a graph which he interprets as providing indications for a state with mass around 105 GeV decaying to like sign μe pairs. In this case one would however expect that mass is roughly 105/2 GeV since electron is considerably lighter than muon in given p-adic length scale.

The decay of bound states of two colored leptons with same (or opposite) charge would require a trilinear coupling gLL₈ analogous to magnetic moment coupling. Color octet leptons L₈ would transform to ordinary leptons by gluon emission.

To sum up, if the rumor is true M₈₉ hadron physics is beginning to demonstrate its explanatory power. The new hadron physics would explain the correlated charged particle pairs not possible to understand in high energy QCD. The additional gamma pair background resulting from the decays of M₈₉ pions could explain the two-gamma anomaly of Higgs decays, and also the failure to get same mass for the Higgs from ZZ and gamma-gamma decays. One should not forget that M₈₉ pion explains the Fermi bump around 135 GeV. It would also explain the anomalous like sign lepton pairs if one accepts TGD view about color.

For background see the chapter New Particle Physics Predicted by TGD: Part I of "p-Adic Length Scale Hypothesis and Hierarchy of Planck constants".