Duality between hadronic and partonic descriptions of hadron physics

I found the talk of Matthew Schwartz titled The Emergence of Jets at the Large Hadron Collider belonging to the Monday Colloqium Series at Harward. The talk told about the history of the notion of jet and how it is applied at LHC. The notion of jet is something between perturbative and non-perturbative QCD and therefore not a precisely defined concept as one approaches small mass limit for jets.

The talk inspired some questions relating to QCD and hadron physics in general. I am of course not competent to say anything interesting about jet algorithms. Hadronization process is however not well understood in the framework of QCD and uses phenomenological fragmentation functions. The description of jet formation in turn uses phenomenological quark distribution functions. TGD leads to a rather detailed fresh ideas about what quarks, gluons, and hadrons are and stringy and QFT like descriptions emerge as excellent candidates for low and high energy descriptions of hadrons. Low energies are the weakness of QCD and one can well ask whether QCD fails as a physical theory at infrared. Could TGD do better in this respect?

Only a minor fraction of the rest energy of proton is in the form of quarks and gluons. In TGD framework these degrees of freedom would naturally correspond to color magnetic flux tubes carrying color magnetic energy and in proton-proton collisions the color magnetic energy of p-p system in cm system is gigantic. The natural question is therefore about what happens to the "color magnetic bodies" of the colliding protons and of quarks in proton-proton collision.

In the sequel I will develop a simple argument leading to a very concrete duality between two descriptions of hadron reactions manifest at the level of generalized Feynman graphs. The first description is in terms of meson exchanges and applies naturally in long scales. Second one is terms of perturbative QCD applying in short scales. The basic ingredients of the argument are the weak form of electric-magnetic duality and bosonic emergence leading to a rather concrete view about physical particles, generalized Feynman diagrams reducing to generalized braid diagrams in the framework of zero energy ontology (ZEO), and reconnection of Kähler magnetic flux tubes having interpretation in terms of string diagrams providing the mechanism of hadronization. Basically the prediction follows from the dual interpretations of generalized Feynman diagrams either as stringy diagrams (low energies) or as Feynman diagrams (high energies).

It must be emphasized that this duality is something completely new and a simple prediction of the notion of generalized Feynman diagram. The result is exact: no limits (such as large N limit) are needed.

Weak form of electric magnetic duality and bosonic emergence

The weak form of electric magnetic duality allows the identification of quark wormhole throats as Kähler magnetic monopoles with non-vanishing magnetic charges Q_m. The closely related bosonic emergence effectively eliminates the fundamental BFF vertices from the theory.

1. Elementary fermion corresponds to single wormhole throat with Kähler magnetic charge. In topological condensation a wormhole throat is formed and the working hypothesis is that the second throat is Kähler magnetically neutral. The throats created in topological condensation (formation of topological sum) are always homologically trivial since purely local process is in question.

2. In absence of topological condensation physical leptons correspond to string like objects with opposite Kähler magnetic charges at the ends. Topologically condensed lepton carries also neutralizing weak isospin carried by neutrino pair at the throats of the neutralizing wormhole contact. Wormhole contact itself carries no Kähler magnetic flux. The neutralization scale for Q_m and weak isospin could be either weak length scale for both fermions and bosons. The alternative option is Compton length quite generally - this even for fermions since it is enough that the weak isospin of weak bosons is neutralized in the weak scale. The alert reader have of course asked whether the weak isospin of fermion must be neutralized at all if this is the case. Whether this really happens is not relevant for the following arguments.

3. Whether a given quark is accompanied by a wormhole contact neutralizing its weak isospin is not quite clear: this need not be the case since the Compton length of weak bosons defines the range of weak interactions. Therefore one can consider the possibility that physical quarks have non-vanishing Q_m and that only hadrons have Q_m=0. Now the Kähler magnetic flux tubes would connect valence quarks. In the case of proton one would have three of them. About 31 year old proposal is that color hyper charge is proportional to Kähler magnetic charge. If so then color confinement would require Kähler magnetic confinement.

4. By bosonic emergence bosons correspond to wormhole contacts or pairs of them. Now wormhole throats have opposite values of Q_m but the contact itself carries vanishing Kähler magnetic flux. Fermion and anti-fermion are accompanied by neutralizing Kähler magnetic charge at the ends of their flux tubes and neutrino pair at its throats neutralizes the weak charge of the boson.

The dual interpretations of generalized Feynman diagrams in terms of hadronic and partonic reaction vertices

Generalized Feynman diagrams are defined in the framework of zero energy ontology (ZEO). Bosonic emergence eliminates fundamental BFF vertices and reduces generalized Feynman diagrams to generalized braid diagrams. This is essential for the dual interpretation of the qqg vertex as a meson emission vertex for hadron. The key idea is following.

1. Topologically condensed hadron - say proton- corresponds to a double sheeted structure: let us label the sheets by letters A and B. Suppose that the sheet A contains wormhole throats of quarks carrying magnetic charges. These wormhole throats are connected by magnetically neutral wormhole contact to sheet B for which wormhole throats carry vanishing magnetic charges.

2. What happens when hadronic quark emits a gluon is easiest to understand by considering first the annihilation of topologically non-condensed charged lepton and antilepton to photon - that is L+Lbar → γ vertex. Lepton and antilepton are accompanied by flux tubes at different space-time sheets A and B and each has single wormhole throat: one can speak of a pair of deformations of topologically condensed CP₂ type vacuum extremals as a correlate for single wormhole throat. At both ends of the flux tubes deformations of CP₂ type exremals fuse via topological sum to form a pair of photon wormhole contacts carrying no Kähler magnetic flux. The condition that the resulting structure has the size of weak gauge boson suggests that weak scale defines also the size of leptons and quarks as magnetic flux tubes. Quarks can however carry net Kähler magnetic charge (the ends of flux tube do not have opposite values of Kähler magnetic charge.

3. With some mental gymnastics the annihilation vertex L+Lbar → γ can be deformed to describe photon emission vertex L→ L+γ. The negative energy antilepton arrives from future and positive energy lepton from the past and they fuse to a virtual photon in the manner discussed.

4. qqg vertex requires further mental gymnastics but locally nothing is changed since the protonic quark emitting the gluon is connected by a color magnetic flux tube to another protonic quark in the case of incoming proton (and possibly to neutrino carrying wormhole contact with size given by the weak length scale). What happens is therefore essentially the same as above. The protonic quark has become part of gluon at space-time sheet A but has still flux tube connection to proton. Besides this there appears wormhole throat at space-time sheet B carrying quark quantum numbers: this quark would in the usual picture correspond to the quark after gluon emission and antiquark at the same space-time sheet associated with the gluon. Therefore one has proton with one quark moving away inside gluon at sheet A and a meson like entity at sheet B. The dual interpretation as the emission of meson by proton makes sense. This vertex does not correspond to the stringy vertex AB+CD→ AD+BC in which strings touch at some point of the interior and recombine but is something totally new and made possible by many-sheeted space-time. For gauge boson magnetically charge throats are at different space-time sheets, for meson they at the same space-time sheet and connected by Kähler magnetic flux tube.

5. Obviously the interpretation as an emission of meson like entity makes sense for any hadron like entity for which quark or antiquark emits gluon. This is what the duality of hadronic and parton descriptions would mean. Note that bosonic emergence is absolutely essential element of this duality. In QCD it is not possible to understand this duality at the level of Feynman diagrams.

Reconnection of color magnetic flux tubes

The reconnection of color magnetic flux tubes is the key mechanism of hadronization and a slow process as compared to quark gluon emission.

1. Reconnection vertices have interpretation in terms of stringy vertices AB+CD→ AD+BC for which interiors of strings serving as representatives of flux tubes touch. The first guess is that reconnection is responsible for the low energy dynamics of hadronic collisions.

2. Reconnection process takes place for both the hadronic color magnetic flux tubes and those of quarks and gluons. For ordinary hadron physics hadrons are characterized by Mersenne prime M₁₀₇. For M₈₉ hadron physics reconnection process takes place in much shorter scales for hadronic flux tubes.

3. Each quarks is characterized by p-adic length scales: in fact this scale characterizes the length scale of the the magnetic bodies of the quark. Therefore Reconnection at the level of the magnetic bodies of quarks take places in several time and length scales. For top quark the size scale of magnetic body is very small as is also the reconnection time scale. In the case of u and d quarks with mass in MeV range the size scale of the magnetic body would be of the order of electron Compton length. This scale assigned with quark is longer than the size scale of hadrons characterized by M₈₉. Classically this does not make sense but in quantum theory Uncertainty Principle predicts it from the smallness of the light quark masses as compared to the hadron mass. The large size of the color magnetic body of quark could explain the strange finding about the charge radius of proton.

4. For instance, the formation of quark gluon plasma would involve reconnection process for the magnetic bodies of colliding protons or nuclei in short time scale due to the Lorentz contraction of nuclei in the direction of the collision axis. Quark-gluon plasma would correspond to a situation in which the magnetic fluxes are distributed in such a manner that the system cannot be decomposed to hadrons anymore but acts like a single coherent unit. Therefore quark-gluon plasma in TGD sense does not correspond to the thermal quark-gluon plasma in the naive QCD sense in which there are no long range correlations.

   Long range correlations and quantum coherence suggest that the viscosity to entropy ratio is low as indeed observed. The earlier arguments suggest that the preferred extremals of Kähler action have interpretation as perfect fluid flows. This means at given space-time sheet allows global time coordinate assignable to flow lines of the flow and defined by conserved isometry current defining Beltrami flow. As a matter fact, all conserved currents are predicted to define Beltrami flows. Classically perfect fluid flow implies that viscosity, which is basically due to a mixing causing the loss of Beltrami property, vanishes. Viscosity would be only due to the finite size of space-time sheets and the radiative corrections describable in terms of fractal hierarchy CDs within CDs. In quantum field theory radiative corrections indeed give rise to the absorbtive parts of the scattering amplitudes.

Hadron-parton duality and TGD as a "square root" of the statistical QCD description

The main result is that generalized Feynman diagrams have dual interpretations as QCD like diagrams describing partonic reactions and stringy diagrams describing hadronic reactions so that these matrix elements can be taken between either hadronic states or partonic states. This duality is something completely new and distinguishes between QCD and TGD.

I have proposed already earlier this kind of duality but based on group theoretical arguments inspired by what I call M⁸-M⁴× CP₂ duality and two hypothesis of the old fashioned hadron physics stating that vector currents are conserved and axial currents are partially conserved. This duality suggests that the group SO(4)= SU(2)_L× SU(2)_R assignable to weak isospin degrees of freedom takes the role of color group at long length scales and can be identified as isometries of E⁴ subset M⁸ just like SU(3) corresponds to the isometries of CP₂.

Initial and final states correspond to positive and negative energy parts of zero energy states in ZEO. These can be regarded either partonic or hadronic many particle states. The inner products between positive energy parts of partonic and hadronic state basis define the "square roots" of the parton distribution functions for hadrons. The inner products of between negative energy parts of hadronic and partonic state basis define the "square roots" of the fragmentations functions to hadrons for partons. M-matrix defining the time-like entanglement coefficients is representable as product of hermitian square root of density matrix and S-matrix is not time reversal invariant and this partially justifies the use of statistical description of partons in QCD framework using distribution functions and fragmentation functions. Decoherence in the sum over quark intermediate states for the hadronic scattering amplitudes is essential for obtaining the standard description.

For details and background see the article Algebraic braids, sub-manifold braid theory, and generalized Feynman diagrams or the new chapter Generalized Feynman Diagrams as Generalized Braids of "Towards M-matrix".