What could the gamma ray pulse detected .4 seconds after the LIGO merger mean?

This posting begins with a part from earlier posting to which I added more material, which turns out to relate also to the no-hair theorem and to Hawking's recent work (discussed from TGD perspective here) in an interesting manner. It might be that the blackhole formed in the merger breaks non-hair theorem by having magnetic moment.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor detected 0.4 seconds after the merger a pulse of gamma rays with red shifted energies about 50 keV (see the posting of Lubos and the article from Fermi Gamma Ray Burst Monitor). At the peak of gravitational pulse the gamma ray power would have been about one millionth of the gravitational radiation. Since the gamma ray bursts do not occur too often, it is rather plausible that the pulse comes from the same source as the gravitational radiation. The simplest model for blackholes does not suggest this but it is not difficult to develop more complex models involving magnetic fields.

Could this observation be seen as evidence for the assumption that dark gravitons are associated with magnetic flux tubes?

1. The radiation would be dark cyclotron gravitation generated at the magnetic flux tubes carrying the dark gravitational radiation at cyclotron frequency f_c= qB/m and its harmonics (q denotes the charge of charge carrier and B the intensity of the magnetic field and its harmonics and with energy E=h_effeB/m .
   
   
2. If h_eff= h_gr= GMm/v₀ holds true, one has E= GMB/v₀ so that all particles with same charge respond at the same the same frequency irrespective of their mass: this could be seen as a magnetic analog of Equivalence Principle. The energy 50 keV corresponds to frequency f∼ 5× 10¹⁸ Hz. For scaling purposes it is good to remember that the cyclotron frequency of electron in magnetic field B_end=.2 Gauss (value of endogenous dark magnetic field in TGD inspired quantum biology) is f_c=.6 Mhz.
   

   From this the magnetic field needed to give 50 keV energy as cyclotron energy would be B_ord= (f/f_c)B_end=.4 GT corresponds to electrons with ordinary value of Planck constant the strength of magnetic field. If one takes the redshift of order v/c∼ .1 for cosmic recession velocity at distance of Gly one would obtain magnetic field of order 4 GT. Magnetic fields of with strength of this order of magnitude have been assigned with neutron stars.
   
   

3. On the other hand, if this energy corresponds to h_gr= GMm_e c/v₀ one has B= (h/h_gr)B_ord = (v₀m_P²/Mm_e)× B_ord∼ (v₀/c)× 10^-11 T (c=1). This magnetic field is rather weak (fT is the bound for detectability) and can correspond only to a magnetic field at flux tube near Earth. Interstellar magnetic fields between arms of Milky way are of the order of 5× 10^-10 T and are presumably weaker in the intergalactic space.
   
   
4. Note that the energy of gamma rays is by order or magnitude or two lower than that for dark gravitons. This suggests that the annihilation of dark gamma rays could not have produced dark gravitons by gravitational coupling bilinear in collinear photons.
   

One can of course forget the chains of mundane realism and ask whether the cyclotron radiation coming from distant sources has its high energy due to large value of h_gr rather than due to the large value of magnetic field at source. The presence of magnetic fields would reflects itself also via classical dynamics (that is frequency). In the recent case the cyclotron period would be of order (.03/v₀) Gy, which is of the same order of magnitude as the time scale defined by the distance to the merger.

In the case of Sun the prediction for energy of cyclotron photons would be E=[v₀(Sun)/v₀] × [M(Sun)/M(BH)] × 50 keV ∼ [v₀(Sun)/v₀] keV. From v₀(Sun)/c≈ 2^-11 one obtains E=(c/v₀)× .5 eV> .5 eV. Dark photons in living matter are proposed to correspond to h_gr=h_eff and are proposed to transform to bio-photons with energies in visible and UV range (see this).

Good dialectic would ask next whether both views about the gamma rays are actually correct. The "visible" cyclotron radiation with standard value of Planck constant at gamma ray energies would be created in the ultra strong magnetic field of blackhole, would be transformed to dark gamma rays with the same energy, and travel to Earth along the flux tubes. In TGD Universe the transformation ordinary photons to dark photons would occur in living matter routinely. One can of course ask whether this transformation takes place only at quantum criticality and whether the quantum critical period corresponds to the merger of blackholes.

The time lag was .4 second and the merger event lasted .2 seconds. Many-sheeted space-time provides one possible explanation. If the gamma rays were ordinary photons so that dark gravitons would have travelled along different flux tubes, one can ask whether the propagation velocities differed by Δ c/c∼ 10^-17. In the case of SN1987A neutrino and gamma ray pulses arrived at different times and neutrinos arrived as two different pulses (see this so that this kind of effect is not excluded. Since the light-like geodesics of the space-time surface are in general not light-like geodesics of the imbedding space signals moving with light velocity along space-time sheet do not move with maximal signal velocity in imbedding space and the time taken to travel from A to B depends on space-time sheet. Could the later arrival time reflect slightly different signal velocities for photons and gravitons?

Could one imagine a function for the gamma ray pulse possibly explaining also why it came considerably later than gravitons (0.4 seconds after the merger which lasted 2. seconds)? This function might relate to the transfer of surplus angular momentum from the system.

1. The merging blackholes were reported to have opposite spins. Opposite directions of spins would make the merger easier since local velocities at the point of contact are in same direction. The opposite directions spins suggest an analogy with two vortices generated from water and this suggests that their predecessors were born inside same star. There is also relative orbital angular momentum forming part of the spin of the final state blackhole, which was modelled as a Kerr blackhole. Since the spins of blackholes were opposite, the main challenge is to understand the transition to the situation in all matter has same direction of spin. The local spin directions must have changed by some mechanism taking away spin.
   
   
2. Magnetic analogs blackholes seem to be needed. They would be analogs of magnetars, which are pulsars with very strong magnetic fields. Magnetic fields are needed to carry out angular momentum from the matter as blackhole is formed. Same should apply now. Outgoing matter spirals along the helical jets (and carries away the spin which is liberated as the rotating matter in two spinning blackholes slows down to rest and the orbital angular momentum becomes the total spin.
   
   
3. If cyclotron adiation left .4 later, it would be naturally assignable to the liberation of temporarily stored surplus angular momentum which blackhole could not carry stably. This cyclotron radiation could have carried out the surplus angular momentum. Amusingly, it could be also seen as a dark analog of Hawking radiation.
   
   

Here one must be ready to update the beliefs about what black hole like objects are. About their interiors empirical data tell of course nothing.

1. The exteriors could contain magnetic fields and must do so in TGD Universe. No exact rotating and magnetic blackhole solutions of Einstein-Maxwell theory are known - otherwise we would not have "blackhole has no hair theorem" stating that blackhole is completely characterized by conserved charges associated with long range interactions: mass, angular momentum and electric charge. In this framework one cannot speak about the magnetic dipole moment of blackhole.
   
   
2. No hair theorem has been challenged quite recently by Hawking (for TGD inspired commentary see this). This suggest the possibility that higher multiple moments characterize blackhole like entities. An extension of U(1) gauge symmetries allowing gauge transformations, which become constant in radial direction at large distances but depend on angle degrees of freedom, is in question. In TGD framework the situation is analogous but much more general and super-symplectic and other symmetries with conformal structure extend the various conformal symmetries and allow to understand also the hierarchy of Planck constants in terms of a fractal hierarchy of symmetry breakins to sub-algebra isomorphic with the full algebra of symmetries in question (see this).
   
   
3. There exist also experimental data challenging the no-hair theorem. The supermassive blackhole like entity near the galactic center is known to have a magnetic field (see this) and thus magnetic moment if the magnetic field is assignable to the blackhole itself rather than matter surrounding it.
   
   

Be as it may, any model should explain why the cyclotron radiation pulse came .4 seconds later than gravitaton pulse rather than at the same time. Compared to .2 seconds for blackhole formation this is quite a long time.

1. Suppose that blackhole like objects have - as any gravitating astrophysical object in TGD Universe must have - a magnetic body making possible the transfer of gravitons and carrying classical gravitational fields. Suppose that radial monopole flux tubes carrying gravitons can carry also BE condensates for which charged particles have varying mass m. h_gr= GMm/v₀=h_eff=n× h implies that particles with different masses reside at their own flux tubes like books in book shelves - something very important in TGD inspired quantum biology (see this).
   

   One might argue that hbar_gr serves as a very large spin unit and makes the storage very effective but here one must be very cautious: spin fractionization suggested by the covering property of space-time sheets could scale down the spin unit to hbar/n. I do not really understand this issue well enough. In any case, already the spontaneously magnetized BE condensate with relative angular momentum of Cooper makes at pairs of helical flux tubes possible effective angular momentum storage.
   
   

2. The spontaneously magnetized dark Bose-Einstein condensate would consist of charged bosons - say charged fermion pairs with members located at parallel flux tubes as in the TGD inspired model of hight T_c superconductor with spin S=1 Cooper pairs. This BE condensate would be ideal for the temporary storage of surplus spin and relative angular momentum of members of pairs at parallel helical flux tubes. This angular momentum would have been radiated away as gamma ray pulse in a quantum phase transition to a state without dark spontaneous magnetization.
   
   

To sum up, LIGO could mean also a new era in the theory of gravitation. The basic problem of GRT description of blackholes relates to the classical conservation laws and it becomes especially acute in the non-stationary situation represented by a merger. Post-Newtonian approximation is more than a calculational tool since it brings in conservation laws from Newtonian mechanics and fixes the coordinate system used to that assignable to empty Minkowski space. Further observations about blackhole mergers might force to ask whether Post-Newtonian approximation actually feeds in the idea that space-time is surface in imbedding space. If the mergers are accompanied by gamma ray bursts as a rule, one is forced to challenge the notion of blackhole and GRT itself.

For details see the chapter Quantum Astrophysics of "Physics in Many-Sheeted Space-time" or the article LIGO and TGD.

For a summary of earlier postings see Links to the latest progress in TGD.