Does a phase transition generating dark occur accompany criticality?

This posting as also the consideration of the idea that criticality could involve a phase transition transforming ordinary matter to dark matter was inspired by a link sent by Ulla. The link was to a popular article telling about mysterious looking action at a distance between liquid containers.

For several years it has been that that superfluid helium in reservoirs next to each other with distance of few micrometers acts collectively, even when the channels connecting them are so thin and long that substantial flow of matter between them is not possible. The article mentions a theoretical model developed by a team of scientists include those from the Instute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warzaw (IPCPACW). According to the article the model reveals that the phenomenon is much more general than previously thought and could take place also systems, which are usually regarded as classical (what this actually means in quantum world is not quite clear!). The reading of the abstract of the article article shows that only Monte Carlo studies are done so that "predicts" is perhaps more appropriate than "reveals".

According to the article, the first report about "action at a distance" was between superfluid reservoirs was published in 2010 in Nature Physics. The team from the University of Buffalo and the State University of New York created an array of tens of millions of cubical reservoirs containing liquid healiium on a silicon plate. The centres of reservoirs had distance of 6 μ and the reservoirs had edge length of 2 μm so that the width of the horizontal gap between reservours was 4 μm. The reservoirs were covered with another silicon plate with a very thin gap above the reservoirs allowing to fill them with liquid helium. The thickness of this vertical gap was d=32 nm - in TGD language this is d=3.2 L(151), where the p-adic length scale L(151)=10 nm defines the thickness of cell membrane. The gap was so thin that it did not allow a significant flow of liquid helium between neighboring reservoirs.

Remark: To be precise, L(151) should be called the Compton length of electron if it would correspond to Gaussian Mersenne MG,k=151=(1+i)^k-1 and is L_e(151)= 5^1/2× L(151), where L(151) would be the genuine p-adic length scale. For brevity I often call L_e just p-adic length scale and drop the subscript "e".

The expectation was that different reservoirs would behave like independent systems without interactions. In particular, the specific heat of the whole system would be sum over the specific heats of individual systems, which were identical. This was not the case. An excess of specific heat was observed in the system. The super-fluid helium was acting as a physical whole.

The natural explanation would be in terms of the superfluid character of the systems. Still the absence of the direct contact - say thin "threads" connecting the reservoirs - makes one to wonder whether the situation can be understood in the framework of conventional quantum physics.

In co-operation with Prof. Douglas Abraham from Oxford University, Dr. Maciolek from (IPCPACW) has developed a theory to exlain the observations. The new theory predicts that the effect of "action at a distance" does not require quantum physics and can also occur in classical one-component fluids, as well as its mixtures. The article says that this theory is confirmed by computer simulations carried out by Oleg Vasilyev from the Max-Planck Insitute für Intelligente Systeme. I would be here a little bit skeptical: experiments conform, computer simulations only allow to calculate!

The theory makes certain predictions.

1. Super-fluidity is not a necessary condition. The phenomenon can occur if the system is near criticality and thus involves at least two different phases of matter. Therefore low temperatures a not necessary. For instance, water and lutidine - a model mixture of water and oil - mix only in certain temperature range and "action at a distance" appears only in this range. On basis of the popular article it remains clear whether this is a prediction or an experimental fact.
   
   
2. The dimensions of the reservoins and the connecting channels are also important. The phenomenon ceas the the distances are significantly larger than the size of human cells.
   
   

Some comments from TGD based view about criticality already summarized in the earlier posting are in order.

1. The notion of "classical" can be misleading. One can model physical phenomena classically - thermodynamical phase transitions are basic example of this but the microscopic - and also non-microscopic physics of long range correlations - can be actually quantal. Basically all physics is quantal and during last years people have begun to learn that even macroscopic physical can behave non-classically. In TGD framework however quantum physics as classical space-time correlates and this brings a new element.
   
   
2. The key question is what makes the superfluids closed in the reservoirs to behave like single quantum coherent system in the first experiment. TGD based view about space-time correlates of criticality and long range correlations associated with suggests that magnetic flux tubes or sheets connecting the superfluid reservoirs are essential. Even more, these flux quanta - possible carrying monopole fluxes - would be universal space-time correlates of any critical phenomenon. In an earlier posting I have already discussed a model for the fountain effect exhibited by ⁴He based on the notion of flux quantum carrying the genuine super fluid (normal and super-fluid component are involved) having non-standard value of Planck constant, which is rather large so that the gravitational Compton length is macroscopic length and the effects of gravitation the wave function are very small and the super-fluid apparently defies gravitational force.
   
   
3. Second question is why cell length scale of few microns would serve as a prerequisite for the phenomenon. The length scale range 10 nm-2.5 μm involves as many as four p-adic length scales labelled by Gaussian Mersennes (k=151,157,163,167) and corresponds to the length scale range between thickness of cell membrane and cell nucleus size. TGD suggests strongly dark variants of weak with h_eff=n× h and also strong physics with corresponding gauge bosons being effective as massless particles below these length scales. The exchange of these massless bosons would generate long range correlations at criticality. Also p-adic variants of these physics with mass scales of weak bosons reduced to a range varying in 1-100 eV range would be involved if TGD vision is correct. Hence criticality would involve quantum physics and even dark matter!
   
   
4. Phase separation - be it separation of particles in mixture or phases of say water - is very relevant of criticality. How this happens? The TGD answer already considered in previous posting relies on the notion of hierarchy of Planck constants h_eff=n× h and universality of cyclotron frequencies associated with magnetic flux tubes and due to the identification h_eff=h_gr= GMm/v₀ already discussed. The large mass M is the mass of the dark fraction of the Earth's mass. This implies that Planck constant characterizes particle and also that the gravitational Compton length is same for all particles and the energy spectrum of cyclotron radiation is universal and in the range of visible and UV energies associated with bio-photons.
   

   All these predictions conform nicely with the universality of criticality. The prediction is that bio-photons would accompany any Earthly critical system. What of course raises the eyebrows of skeptics is the proposed dependence of critical phenomena on the dark gravitational mass of the planet or system which the system is part of.
   

For details and references see the new chapter Criticality and dark matter of "Hyper-finite factors and hierarchy of Planck constants" or the article Criticality and dark matter.