Surfaceology and TGD

The inspiration coming from the work of Nima Arkani-Hamed and colleagues concerning the twistor Grassmannian approach provided a strong boost for the development of TGD. I started from the problems of the twistor approach and ended up with a geometrization of the twistor space in terms of sub-manifold geometry with twistor space represented as a 6-surface. Also the twistor space of CP₂ played a key role.

This led to rather dramatic results. Most importantly, the twistor lift of TGD is possible only for H=M⁴× CP₂ since only M⁴ and CP₂ allow twistor space with Kähler structure: TGD is unique. The most recent result is that one can formulate the twistor-lift in terms of 6-surfaces of H (rather than 6-surfaces in the product of the twistor spaces of M⁴ and CP₂). These twistor surfaces represent twistor spaces of M⁴ and CP₂ or rather their generalizations, their intersection would define the space-time surface. Therefore one can formulate the twistor lift without the the 12-D product of twistor spaces of M⁴ and CP₂.

During last years I have not followed the work of Nima and others since our ways went in very different directions: Nima was ready to give up space-time altogether and I wanted to replace it with 4-surfaces. I was also very worried about giving up space-time since twistor is basically a notion related to a flat 4-D Minkowski space.

However, in Quanta Magazine there there was recently a popular article telling about the recent work of Nima Arkani Hamed and his collaborators (see this). The title of the article was "Physicists Reveal a Quantum Geometry That Exists Outside of Space and Time". The article discusses the notions of amplituhedron and associahedron which together with the twistor Grassmann approach led to considerable insights about theories with N=4 supersymmetry. These theories are however rather limited and do not describe physical reality. In the fall of 2022, a Princeton University graduate student named Carolina Figueiredo realized that three types of particles lead to very similar scattering amplitudes. Some kind of universality seems to be involved. This leads to developments which allow to generalize the approach based on N=4 SUSY.

This approach, called surfaceology, still starts from the QFT picture, which has profound problems. On the other hand, it suggests that the calculational algorithms of QFT lead universally to the same result and are analogous to iteration of a dynamics defined in a theory space leading to the same result irrespective of the theory from which one starts from: this is understandable since the renormalization of coupling constants means motion in theory space.

How does the surfaceology relate to TGD?

1. What one wants are the amplitudes, not all possible ways to end up them. The basic obstacle here is the belief in path integral approach. In TGD, general coordinate invariance forces holography forcing to give up path integral as something completely unnecessary.
2. Surfaceology and brings strongly in mind TGD. I have talked for almost 47 years about space-time as surfaces without any attention from colleagues (unless one regards the crackpot label and the loss of all support as such). Now I can congratulate myself: the battle that has lasted 47 years has ended in a victory. TGD is a more or less mature theory.

   It did not take many years to realize that space-times must be 4-surfaces in H=M⁴×CP₂, which is forced by both the standard model symmetries including Poincare invariance and by the mathematical existence of the theory. Point-like particles are replaced with 3-surfaces or rather the 4-D analogs of their Bohr orbits which are almost deterministic. These 4-surfaces contain 3-D light-like partonic orbits containing fermion lines. Space-time surfaces can in turn be seen as analogs of Feynman graphs with lines thickened to orbits of particles as 3-surfaces as analogs of Bohr orbits.

3. In holography=holomorphy vision space-time surfaces are minimal surfaces realized as roots of function pairs (f₁,f₂) of 4 generalized complex coordinates of H (the hypercomplex coordinate has light-like coordinate curves). The roots of f₁ and f₂ are 6-D surfaces analogous to twistor spaces of M⁴ and CP₂ and their intersection gives the space-time surface. The condition f₂=0 defines a map between the twistor spheres of M⁴ and CP₂. Outside the 3-D light-like partonic orbits appearing as singularities and carrying fermionic lines, these surfaces are extremals of any general coordinate invariant action constructible in terms of the induced geometry. In accordance with quantum criticality, the dynamics is therefore universal.

   Holography=holomorphy vision generalizes ordinary holomorphy, which is the prerequisite of twistorialization. Now light-like 4-D momenta are replaced with 8-momenta which means that the generalized twistorialization applies also to particles massive in 4-D sense.

This indeed strongly resembles what the popular article talks about surfaceology: the lines of Feynman diagrams are thickened to surfaces and lines are drawn to the surfaces which are however not space-time surfaces. Note that also Nima Arkani-Hamed admits that it would be important to have the notion of space-time.

The TGD view is crystallized in Geometric Langlands correspondence is realized naturally in TGD and implying correspondence between geometric and number theoretic views of TGD.

1. Space-time surfaces form an algebra decomposing to number fields so that one can multiply, divide, sum and subtract them. The classical solution of the field equations can be written as a root for a pair of analytic functions of 4 generalized complex coordinates of H. By holography= holomorphy vision, space-time surfaces are holomorphic minimal surfaces with singularities to which the holographic data defining scattering amplitudes can be assigned.
2. What is marvelous is that the minimal surfaces emerge irrespective of the classical action as long as it is general coordinate invariant and constructed in terms of induced geometry: action makes itself visible only at the partonic orbits and vacuum functional. This corresponds to the mysterious looking finding of Figueiredo.

   There is however a unique action and it corresponds to Kähler action for 6-D generalization of twistor space as surface in the product of twistor spaces of M⁴ and CP₂. These twistor spaces of M⁴ and CP₂ must allow Kahler structure and this is only possible for them. TGD is completely unique. Also number theoretic vision as dual of geometric vision implies uniqueness. A further source of uniqueness is that non-trivial fermionic scattering amplitudes exist only for 4-D space-time surfaces and 8-D embedding space.

3. Scattering amplitudes reduce at fermionic level to n-point functions of free field theory expressible using fermionic propagators for free leptonic and quark-like spinor fields in H with arguments restrict to the discrete set of self-intersections of the space-time surfaces and in more general case to intersections of several space-time surfaces. This works only for 4-D space-time surfaces and 8-dimensional H. Also pair creation is possible and is made possible by the existence of exotic smooth structures, which are ordinary smooth structures with defects identifiable as the intersection points. Therefore there is a direct correspondence with 4-D homology and intersection form (see this). One can say that TGD in its recent form provides an exact construction recipe for the scattering amplitudes.
4. There is no special need to construct scattering amplitudes in terms of twistors although this is possible since the classical realization of twistorialization is enough and only spin 1/2 fermions are present as fundamental particles. Since all particles are bound states of fundamental fermions propagating along fermion lines associated with the partonic orbits, all amplitudes involve only propagators for free fermions of H. The analog of twistor diagrams correspond to diagrams, whose vertices correspond to the intersections and self-intersections for space-time surfaces.

For the the recent view of TGD see this and this. For the Geometric Langlands duality in the TGD framework see this .

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

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.