Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Unexpected support for the nuclear string model

Nuclear string model (see this) replaces in TGD framework the shell model. Completely unexpected support for nuclear string model emerged from a research published by CLAS Collaboration in Nature (see this). The popular article "Protons May Have Outsize Influence on Properties of Neutron Stars" refers to possible implications for the understanding of neutron stars but my view is that the implications might dramatically modify the prevailing view about nuclei themselves. The abstract of popular article reads as (see this).

"A study conducted by an international consortium called the CLAS Collaboration, made up of 182 members from 42 institutions in 9 countries, has confirmed that increasing the number of neutrons as compared to protons in the atom’s nucleus also increases the average momentum of its protons. The result, reported in the journal Nature, has implications for the dynamics of neutron stars."

The finding is that protons tend to pair with neutrons. If the number of neutrons increases, the probability for the pairing increases too. The binding energy of the pair is liberated as kinetic energy of the pair - rather than becoming kinetic energy of proton as the popular text inaccurately states.

Pairing does not fit with shell model in which proton and neutron shells correlate very weakly. The weakness of proton-neutron correlations in nuclear shell model looks somewhat paradoxical in this sense since - as text books tell to us - it is just the attractive strong interaction between neutron and proton, which gives rise to the nuclear binding.

In TGD based view about nucleus protons and neutrons are connected to nuclear strings with short color flux tubes connecting nucleons so that one obtains what I call nuclear string (see this). These color flux tubes would bind nucleons rather than nuclear force in the conventional sense.

What can one say about correlations between nucleons in nuclear string model? If the nuclear string has low string tension, one expects that nucleons far away from each other are weakly correlated but neighboring nuclei correlate strongly by the presence of the color flux tube connecting them.

Minimization of repulsive Coulomb energy would favor protons with neutrons as nearest neighbors so that pairing would be favored. For instance, one could have n-n-n... near the ends of the nuclear string and -p-n-p-n-... in the middle region and strong correlations and higher kinetic energy. Even more neutrons could be between protons if the nucleus is neutron rich. This could also relate to neutron halo and the fact that the number of neutrons tends to be larger than that of protons. Optimistic could see the experimental finding as a support for nuclear string model.

Color flux tubes can certainly have charge 0 but also charges 1 and -1 are possible since the string has quark and antiquark at its ends giving uubar, ddbar, udbar, dubar with charges 0,0,-1,+1. Proton plus color flux tube with charge -1 would effectively behave as neuron. Could this kind of pseudo neutrons exist in nucleus? Or even more radically: could all neurons in the nucleus be this kind of pseudo neutrons?

The radical view conforms with the model of dark nuclei as dark proton sequences - formed for instance in Pollack effect (see this) - in which some color bonds can become also negatively charged to reduce Coulomb repulsion. Dark nuclei have scaled down binding energy and scaled up size. They can decay to ordinary nuclei liberating almost all ordinary nuclear binding energy: this could explaining "cold fusion" (see this).

See the chapter Nuclear string model of "Hyper-finite factors, p-adic length scale hypothesis, and dark matter hierarchy".

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Articles and other material related to TGD.

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