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Sunday, June 28, 2009

Genes and Water Memory

After long time I had opportunity to read a beautiful experimental article. Not about the latest dramatic experimental breakthroughs in proving F theory to be the only possible theory of everything and even more;-) but about experimental biology. Yolene Thomas, who worked with Benveniste, kindly sent the article to me. The freely loadable article is Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences by Luc Montagnier, Jamal Aissa, Stéphane Ferris, Jean-Luc Montagnier, and Claude Lavallée published in the journal Interdiscip. Sci. Comput. Life Sci. (2009).

1. Basic findings at cell level

I try to list the essential points of the article. Apologies for biologists: I am not a specialist.

  1. Certain pathogenic micro-organisms are objects of the study. The bacteria Mycoplasma Pirum and E. Choli belong to the targets of the study. The motivating observation was that some procedures aimed at sterilizing biological fluids can yield under some conditions the infectious micro-organism which was present before the filtration and absent immediately after it. For instance, one filtrates a culture of human lymphocytes infected by M. Pirum, which has infected human lymphocytes to make it sterile. The filters used have 100 nm and 20 nm porosities. M. Pirum has size of 300 nm so that apparently sterile fluids results. However if this fluid is incubated with a mycoplasma negative culture of human lymphocytes, mycoplasma re-appears within 2 or 3 weeks! This sounds mysterious. Same happens as 20 nm filtration is applied to a a minor infective fraction of HIV, whose viral particles have size in the range 100-120 nm.

  2. These findings motivated a study of the filtrates and it was discovered that they have a capacity to produce low frequency electromagnetic waves with frequencies in good approximation coming as the first three harmonics of kHz frequency, which by the way plays also a central role in neural synchrony. What sounds mysterious is that the effect appeared after appropriate dilutions with water: positive dilution fraction varied between 10-7 and 10-12. The uninfected eukaryotic cells used as controls did not show the emission. These signals appeared for both M. Pirum and E. Choli but for M. Pirum a filtration using 20 nm filter canceled the effect. Hence it seems that the nano-structures in question have size between 20 and 100 nm in this case.

    A resonance phenomenon depending on excitation by the electromagnetic waves is suggested as an underlying mechanism. Stochastic resonance familiar to physicists suggests itself and also I have discussed it while developing ideas about quantum brain (see this). The proposed explanation for the necessity of the dilution could be kind of self-inhibition. Maybe a gel like phase which does not emit radiation is present in sufficiently low dilution but is destroyed in high dilutions after which emission begins. Note that the gel phase would not be present in healthy tissue. Also a destructive interference of radiation emitted by several sources can be imagined.

  3. Also a cross talk between dilutions was discovered. The experiment involved two tubes. Donor tube was at a low dilution of E. Choli and "silent" (and carrying gel like phase if the above conjecture is right). Receiver tube was in high dilution (dilution fraction 10-9) and "loud". Both tubes were placed in mu-metal box for 24 hours at room temperature. Both tubes were silent after his. After a further dilution made for the receiver tube it became loud again. This could be understood in terms of the formation of gel like phase in which the radiation does not take place. The effect disappeared when one interposed a sheath of mu-metal between the tubes. Emission of similar signals was observed for many other bacterial specials, all pathogenic. The transfer occurred only between identical bacterial species which suggests that the signals and possibly also frequencies are characteristic for the species and possibly code for DNA sequences characterizing the species.

  4. A further surprising finding was that the signal appeared in dilution which was always the same irrespective of what was the original dilution.

2. Experimentation at gene level

The next step in experimentation was performed at gene level.

  1. The killing of bacteria did not cancel the emission in appropriate dilutions unless the genetic material was destroyed. It turned out that the genetic material extracted from the bacteria filtered and diluted with water produced also an emission for sufficiently high dilutions.

  2. The filtration step was essential for the emission also now. The filtration for 100 nm did not retain DNA which was indeed present in the filtrate. That effect occurred suggests that filtration destroyed a gel like structure inhibiting the effect. When 20 nm filtration was used the effect disappeared which suggests that the size of the structure was in the range 20-100 nm.

  3. After the treatment by DNAse enzyme inducing splitting of DNA to pieces the emission was absent. The treatment of DNA solution by restriction enzyme acting on many sites of DNA did not suppress the emission suggesting that the emission is linked with rather short sequences or with rare sequences.

  4. The fact that pathogenic bacteria produce the emission but not "good" bacteria suggests that effect is caused by some specific gene. It was found that single gene - adhesin responsible for the adhesion of mycoplasma to human cells- was responsible for the effect. When the cloned gene was attached to two plasmids and the E. Choli DNA was transformed with the either plasmid, the emission was produced.

3. Some consequences

The findings could have rather interesting consequences.

  1. The refinement of the analysis could make possible diagnostics of various diseases and suggests bacterial origin of diseases like Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, Multiple Sclerosis and Rheumatoid Arthritis since the emission signal could serve as a signature of the gene causing the disease. The signal can be detected also from RNA viruses such as HIV, influenza virus A, and Hepatitis C virus.

  2. Emission could also play key role in the mechanism of adhesion to human cells making possible the infection perhaps acting as a kind of password.

The results are rather impressive. Some strongly conditioned skeptic might have already stopped reading after encountering the word "dilution" and associating it with a word which no skeptic scientist in his right mind should not say aloud: "homeopathy"! By reading carefully what I wrote above, it is easy to discover that the experimenters unashamedly manufactured a homeopathic remedy out of the filtrate! And the motivating finding was that although filtrate should not have contained the bacteria, they (according to authors), or at least the effects caused by them, appeared within weeks to it! This is of course impossible in the word of skeptic.

The next reaction of the skeptic is of course that this is fraud or the experimenters are miserable crackpots. Amusingly, one of the miserable crackpots is Nobelist Luc Montagnier whose research group discovered AIDS virus.

4. How TGD could explain the findings?

Let us leave the raging skeptics for a moment and sketch possible explanations in TGD framework.

  1. Skeptic would argue that the filtration allowed a small portion of infected cells to leak through the filter. Many-sheeted space-time suggests a science fictive variant of this explanation. During filtration part of the infected cells is "dropped" to large space-time sheets and diffused back to the original space-time sheets during the next week. This would explain why the micro-organisms were regenerated within few weeks. Same mechanism could work for ordinary molecules and explain homeopathy. This can be tested: look whether the molecules return back to the the diluted solution in the case of a homeopathic remedy.

  2. If no cells remain in the filtrate, something really miraculous looking events are required to make possible the regeneration of the effects serving as the presence of cells. This even in the case that DNA fragments remain in the filtrate.

    1. The minimum option is that the presence of these structures contained only the relevant information about the infecting bacteria and this information coded in terms of frequencies was enough to induce the signatures of the infection as a kind of molecular conditioning. Experimentalists can probably immediately answer whether this can be the case.

    2. The most radical option is that the infecting bacteria were actually regenerated as experimenters claim! The information about their DNA was in some form present and was transcribed to DNA and/or RNA, which in turn transformed to proteins. Maybe the small fragment of DNA (adhesin) and this information should have been enough to regenerate the DNA of the bacterium and bacterium itself. A test for this hypothesis is whether the mere nanoparticles left from the DNA preparation to the filtrate can induce the regeneration of infecting molecules.

The notion of magnetic body carrying dark matter quantum controlling living matter forms the basic element of TGD inspired model of quantum biology and suggests a more concrete model. For a possible experimental support for the notion see the earlier posting.

  1. If the matter at given layer of the onion-like structure formed by magnetic bodies has large hbar, one can argue that the layer corresponds to a higher evolutionary level than ordinary matter with longer time scale of memory and planned action. Hence it would not be surprising if the magnetic bodies were able to replicate and use ordinary molecules as kind of sensory receptors and motor organs. Perhaps the replication of magnetic bodies preceded the replication at DNA level and genetic code is realized already at this more fundamental level somehow. Perhaps the replication of magnetic bodies induces the replication of DNA as I have suggested.

  2. As I have discussed in my earlier postings and and in the books at my homepage, the magnetic body of DNA would make DNA a topological quantum computer (see this). DNA itself would represent the hardware and magnetic bodies would carry the evolving quantum computer programs realized in terms of braidings of magnetic flux tubes. The natural communication and control tool would be cyclotron radiation besides Josephson radiation associated with cell membranes acting as Josephson junctions. Cyclotron frequencies are indeed the only natural frequencies that one can assign to molecules in kHz range. There would be an entire fractal hierarchy of analogs of EEG making possible the communication with and control by magnetic bodies.

  3. The values of Planck constant would define a hierarchy of magnetic bodies which corresponds to evolutionary hierarchy and the emergence of a new level would mean jump in evolution. Gel like phases could serve as a correlate for the presence of the magnetic body. The phase transitions changing the value of Planck constant and scale up or down the size of the magnetic flux tubes. They are proposed to serve as a basic control mechanism making possible to understand the properties and the dynamics of the gel phases and how biomolecules can find each other in the thick molecular soup via a phase transition reducing the length of flux tubes connecting the biomolecules in question and thus forcing them to the vicinity of each other.

Consider now how this model could explain the findings.

  1. Minimal option is that the the flux tubes correspond to "larger space-time sheets" and the infected cells managed to flow into the filtrate along magnetic flux tubes from the filter. This kind of transfer of DNA might be made possible by the recently discovered nanotubes already mentioned.

  2. Maybe the radiation resulted as dark photons invisible for ordinary instruments transformed to ordinary photons as the gel phase assignable with the dark matter at magnetic flux tube network associated with the infected cells and corresponding DNA was destroyed in the filtration.

    This is not the only possible guess. A phase conjugate cyclotron radiation with a large value of Planck constant could also allow for the nanostructures in dilute solute to gain metabolic energy by sending negative energy quanta to a system able to receive them. Indeed the presence of ambient radiation was necessary for the emission. Maybe that for sufficiently dilute solute this mechanism allows to the nanostructures to get metabolic energy from the ambient radiation whereas for the gel phase the metabolic needs are not so demanding. In the similar manner bacteria form colonies when metabolically deprived. This sucking of energy might be also part of the mechanism of disease.

  3. What could be the magnetic field inducing the kHz radiation as a synchrotron radiation?

    1. For instance, kHz frequency and its harmonics could correspond to the cyclotron frequencies of proton in magnetic field which field strength slightly above that for Earth's magnetic field (750 Hz frequency corresponds to field strength of BE, where BE/=.5 Gauss, the nominal strength of Earth's magnetic field). A possible problem is that the thickness of the flux tubes would be about cell size for Earth's magnetic field from flux quantization and even larger for dark matter with a large value of Planck constant. Of course, the flux tubes could make themselves thinner temporarily and leak through the pores.
    2. If the flux tube is assumed to have thickness of order 20-100 nm, the magnetic field for ordinary value of hbar would be of order .1 Tesla from flux quantization and in the case of DNA the cyclotron frequencies would not depend much on the length of DNA fragment since the it carries a constant charge density. Magnetic field of order .2 Tesla would give cyclotron frequency of order kHZ from the fact that the field strength of .2 Gauss gives frequency of about .1 Hz. This correspond to a magnetic field with flux tube thickness ≈ 125 nm, which happens to be the upper limit for the porosity. Dark magnetic flux tubes with large hbar are however thicker and the leakage might involve a temporary phase transition to a phase with ordinary value of hbar reducing the thickness of the flux tube. Perhaps some genes (adhesin) plus corresponding magnetic bodies representing DNA in terms of cyclotron frequencies depending slightly on precise weight of the DNA sequence and thus coding it correspond to the frequency of cyclotron radiation are the sought for nano-structures.

  4. While developing a model for homeopathy based on dark matter I ended up with the idea that dark matter consisting of nuclear strings of neutrons and protons with a large value of hbar and having thus a zoomed up size of nucleon could be involved. The really amazing finding was that nucleons as three quark systems allow to realize vertebrate code in terms of states formed from entangled quarks (see this and this and also the earlier posting)! One cannot decompose codons to letters as in the case of the ordinary genetic code but codons are analogous to symbols representing entire words in Chinese. The counterparts of DNA, RNA, and aminoacids emerge and genetic code has a concrete meaning as a map between quantum states.

    Without any exaggeration this connection between dark hadronic physics and biology has been one of the greatest surprises of my professional life. It suggests that dark matter in macroscopic quantum phase realizes genetic code at the level of nuclear physics and biology only provides one particular (or probably very many as I have proposed) representations of it. If one takes this seriously one can imagine that genetic information is represented by these dark nuclear strings of nanoscopic size and that there exists a mechanism translating the dark nuclei to ordinary DNA and RNA sequences and thus to biological matter. This would explain the claimed regeneration of the infected cells.

  5. Genetic code at dark matter level would have far reaching implications. For instance, living matter - or rather, the magnetic bodies controlling it - could purposefully perform genetic engineering. This forces me to spit out another really dirty word, "Lamarckism"! We have of course learned that mutations are random. The basic objection against Lamarckism is that there is no known mechanism which would transfer the mutations to germ cells. In the homeopathic Universe of TGD the mutations could be however performed first for the dark nucleon sequences. After this these sequences would diffuse to germ cells just like homeopathic remedies do, and after this are translated to DNA or RNA and attach to DNA.

We are living exciting times. If someone wants to share this experience with me, she or he can can consult the chapter Homeopathy in Many-Sheeted Space-Time of Bio-Systems as Conscious Holograms where also the nuclear realization of the genetic code is discussed. If the word "hopeopathy" in the title is too much for the stomach of the reader, he can consult also the chapter Nuclear String Model of p-Adic length Scale Hypothesis and Dark Matter Hierarchy.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

p-Adicization, twistor program, and quantum criticality

Just a brief note (strongly updated!) about the recent situation concerning bosonic emergence and QFT limit of TGD. There is now a very attractive overall view about how p-adic and real physics are fused together and how p-adic fractality emerges when real Lorentz invariants - typically mass squared for subsystem- are mapped to their p-adic counterparts of a suitable variant of canonical identification which in its simplest form reads as &sum xnpn → &sum xnp-n. One can say that quantum criticality, bosonic emergence, number theoretic universality, p-adic fractality, and twistor program seem to be very intimately inter-related in TGD Universe.

Loops are the problem of the p-adicization program as also twistor program. In twistorialization the problem can e overcome by using Cutkosky rules which means that one adds to the tree diagram TT+ contribution for on mass shell intermediate states allowing unitarization. Since this contribution involves only massless intermediate states twistorialization is possible. This is actually what I suggested earlier (only light-like loop momenta are allowed in twistor context) without properly realizing the connection with Cutkosky rules! If TT+ makes sense also p-adically, p-adicization and p-adic fractalization are possible.

Unitarization by Cutkosky rules does not make sense for fermionic loops defining the bosonic vertices as becomes clear by considering B→FFbar→B loop for massless particles. Furthermore, if these vertices were non-vanishing for on mass shell momenta (massless) unitarity would force the introduction of TT+ contribution and one could not speak about vertices anymore. Therefore it seems that the fermionic loops defining bosonic vertices vanish when the bosons are on mass shell. These conditions would generalize the quantum criticality condition and hopefully fix completely the vertices. It also means that only BFF vertex is non-vanishing for on mass shell particles as is natural since Dirac action coupled to gauge bosons is the basic action principle. The vanishing of on mass shell N-vertices gives an infinite number of conditions on the hyperbolic cutoff as function of the integer k labeling p-adic length scale at the limit when bosons are massless and IR cutoff for the loop mass scale is taken to zero. For a finite cutoff kmax the number of vanishing vertices is finite and correspond to some maximum value Ncr analogous to the order of perturbation theory and identifiable as characterization of the finite measurement resolution.

Whether the vanishing of the fermionic loops defining vertices is achieved by fixing the hyperbolic cutoff is not clear, and one can wonder whether dynamical on mass shell symmetries -in particular various super-conformal symmetries - could be involved. The first checks suggests that super-symmetry cannot lead to the vanishing of the on mass shell vertices and that hyperbolic cutoff and the non-trivial relation between time-like and space-like hyperbolic cutoffs are necessary.

To me it seems that TGD has forced a rather dramatic simplicification of the very notion of quantum field theory. If so, then the mere assumption about the existence of QFT limit (to say nothing about the assumption that this limit is GUT or a minimally supersymmetric version of standard model (MSSM) for which Lebensraum is shrinking continually) would have led competing unified theorists to a fatal side track.

A more detailed representation can be found from the last section of the new chapter Quantum Field Theory Limit of TGD from Bosonic Emergence of "Towards M-matrix". I also extracted from the chapter a short piece of text explaining in more detail the ideas discussed here and in the previous posting.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Bosonic Emergence, Number Theoretic Universality, p-Adic Fractality, and Twistor Program

Mahndisa made some questions about p-adic fractalization of S-matrix. My reply had too many characters so that I decided to add it as a separate posting.

Dear Manhndisa,

The problems are essentially number theoretical. And "ontological" as philosopher would say. I have a bundle of general ideas developed in various chapters of various books. I try to give impression about just the bare essentials.

  1. In TGD framework M-matrix replaces S-matrix: zero energy ontology, etc. The S-matrix accompanying M-matrix is not obtained as a unitary evolution operator as in QFT:s since M-matrix defines time-like entanglement coefficients between positive and negative energy parts of the zero energy state having as counterparts initial and final states of a physical event in positive energy ontology. Heisenberg and Schrodinger pictures relate to positive energy ontology and are therefore not terribly relevant here.

  2. Number theoretic universality. M-matrix of same functional form as a function of Lorentz invariants defines complex and p-adic valued variants. The strongest form of this universality is rationality of matrix elements. It should be also possible to algebraically continue this M-matrix to various number fields from the field of rationals (algebraics, reals, and p-adics are completions of rationals and the completion process generalizes to the completion of rational physics in various number fields). p-Adic physics should be visible also at the real side at the level of matrix elements (besides mass spectrum) and here p-adic fractalization enters the stage.

  3. Bosonic emergence is essential for QFT limit and emerged from twistor related considerations, started then to look more or less independent of twistors so that I separated it to its own chapter, and finally turned out to be highly relevant for twistorizalition! The counterpart of bosonic YM action emerges from Dirac action via functional integral over fermion fields. In particular, the inverse of the bosonic propagator emerges as fermionic loop. Bosonic emergence in principle predicts all coupling constants and their evolution if one can fix the cutoffs involved with the loop integral over fermion momenta. Quantum criticality should determine the cutoff in hyperbolic angle. What quantum criticality means exactly at the level of MATLAB modules is the problem and with this problem I have worked last months and tested various hypothesis.

  4. After tedious and slow calculations it seems that the definition of criticality that I have worked for last month does not work (I managed to calculate yesterday and last night 30 first p-adic length scales using the proposal for criticality based on real physics: the resulting hyperbolic cutoff behaves in non-physical manner if its growth continues to say electron length scale). The proposal is that one should use essentially same definition but adding p-adic fractality. In this picture the real variant of bosonic propagator defines also p-adic propagator: the real Lorentz invariants appearing in matrix element are mapped to p-adic ones by a proper variant of canonical identification. The resulting p-adic sum of various contributions to the propagator from various p-adic mass scales is then mapped back to reals and you get p-adic fractal. This is just the visit from reality to p-adicity and successful return together with brand new p-adically fractal bosonic propagator!;-)

  5. What I realized yesterday is that internal consistency is achieved only if the loops involving gauge bosons vanish. This has been one of the one thousand and one formulations of quantum criticality during years. Therefore only tree diagrams with emerging bosonic propagators and free fermionic propagators are needed. One obtains non-trivial coupling constant evolution and tree diagrams! Both real and p-adic versions of perturbation theory exist since the mathematically existence bosonic loop integrals are absent. Number theoretical universality and p-adic fractality are both obtained. That p-adicity is visible also at the level of real scattering amplitudes is highly satisfactory. This picture generalizes also to the quantum TGD proper.

  6. Whether the general definition of quantum criticality as vanishing of the bosonic loops is equivalent with definition of quantum criticality allowing to deduce hyperbolic cutoff and which I have studied during last month (whose technical definition I will not discuss here) after p-adic fractalization remains an open question.

  7. What is interesting that twistorialization, which was the starting point of the work one half year ago, works for tree diagrams. Physics requires non-trivial coupling constant evolution and thus loops in standard framework but loops are the basic problem of twistor approach since particles in loops are massive and twistorialization for them is not elegant. All the fantastic results of twistorialization program (say this) are for tree diagrams. Bosonic loops would not be present p-adically (would vanish in real sense) in quantum critical TGD Universe.

This is the general picture now. I have the feeling that no big changes are needed anymore.

The relevant text can be found from the last section of the new chapter Quantum Field Theory Limit of TGD from Bosonic Emergence of "Towards M-matrix".

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Silence

I have not had time for blog postings. My response to the Mahndisa in earlier posting gives the reason why and also some ideas about the recent situation in coupling constant evolution. I hope that I can write as summary within few days.

Dear Mahndisa,

numerical work makes me rather non-communicative;-). I have been working with the numerical realization for the model of coupling constant evolution based on quantum criticality. Numerical work is is not easy at this age and would require a hard wired brain at any age. To make challenge even more difficult, I am forced to use MATLAB without compiler and there are a lot of loops. The basic challenge is how to make things fast by making as much as possible analytically. This kind of problems sound of course childish and crackpottish in the ears of anyone allowed to use the computational resources of any physics department of any University. Perhaps I should be ashamed;-)!

There are also other reasons for being not so communicative. Last week MATLAB went completely mad: probably I became a victim of a clever virus attack, nothing standard against which I am well-shielded. This was not the first time.

Add to this jeremiad the problems of everyday life (for a week I have had nothing at my bank account and getting support social office is slow nowadays since there are long ques) and you begin to understand why the working conditions are not very inspiring. We are however in Finland and in the academic circles of this country thinkers are regarded next to criminals and the best manner to treat them has been found to be the academic equivalent of Siberia.

In any case I have made a lot of progress in understanding coupling constant evolution. The question whether the proposed realization of quantum criticality works is still open. In any case, at ultrahigh energies the behavior of em couplings strength would be like that for asymptotic free theory if criticality is accepted. For low energies the criticality is consistent with standard model behavior for fine structure constant (its value at electron and intermediate boson scale are the constraints). I do not yet know whether the low energy and high energy behaviors are consistent with each other or not. The calculations are desperately slow.

This problem led to the ask whether p-adicization of the theory is necessary to realize criticality. Within two days this led to a rather precise recipe for how to p-adicize the theory in terms of p-adic fractals- creatures which I discovered within first year of p-adic TGD but for which I have not found direct application in TGD hitherto.

The recipe was very simple: consider real Lorentz invariant amplitudes, map Lorentz invariant kinematic quantities to their p-adic counterparts by some variant of canonical identification to get p-adic calued functions with same functional form, carry out arithmetic operations such as the summation of perturbative contributions using p-adic arithmetics, and map the result back to reals to get a p-adic fractal.

You just go to p-adicity, perform arithmetics there and return to reality to see what you got! In this manner the difficulties related to p-adicization such as the non-existence of p-adic definite integral, and the problems with minus sign and imaginary unit can be circumvented and the outcome cannot differ too much from real physics prediction.

I hope that I can write about this within few days. The recent situation concerning bosonic emergence in quantum TGD framework given in the new chapter Quantum Field Theory Limit of TGD from Bosonic Emergence of "Towards M-matrix".

Best Regards,

Matti

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Which Omegab is the real one or are both of them real?

Tommaso Dorigo has three interesting postings about the discovery of Ωb baryon containing two strange quarks and one bottom quark. So interesting that I gave up my decision to concentrate totally in the attempt to survive through the horrors of MATLAB assisted numerics related to a quantum criticality based model for coupling constant evolution.

In chronological order the postings of Tommaso are Nitpicking Ωb discovery, Nitpicking Ωb discovery: part II, and finally Real discovery of Ωb released by CDF today. Also Peter Woit has a posting on the subject.

As the titles of Tommaso's postings suggest, Ωb has been discovered -even twice. This is not a problem. The problem is that the masses of these Ωbs differ quite too much. D0 collaboration discovered Ωb with a significance of 5.4 sigma and a mass of 6165 +/- 16.4 MeV. Yesterday the CDF collaboration discovered the same particle with a significance of 5.5 sigma and a mass of 6054.4 +/- 6.9 MeV. Both D0 and CDF agree that the particle is there at better than 5 sigma significance and also that the other collaboration is wrong. They can’t both be right… Or could they? In some other Universe that that of standard model and all its standard generalizations, maybe in some less theoretically respected Universe, say TGD Universe?

The mass difference between the two Ωb candidates is 111 MeV, which represents the mass scale of strange quark. TDG inspired model for quark masses relies on p-adic thermodynamics and predicts that quarks can appear in several p-adic mass scales forming a hierarchy of half octaves - in other words mass scales comes as powers of square root of two. This property is absolutely essential for the TGD based model for masses of even low lying baryons and mesons where strange quarks indeed appear with several different p-adic mass scales. It also explains the large difference of the mass scales assigned to current quarks and constituent quarks. Light variants of quarks appear also in nuclear string model where nucleons are connected by color bonds containing light quark and antiquark at their ends.

Ωb contains two strange quarks and the mass difference between the two candidates is of order of mass of strange quark. Could it be that both Ωbs are real and the discrepancy provides additional support for p-adic length scale hypothesis?

This would not be the first piece of experimental evidence for p-adic length scale hypothesis. During years the experimental indications supporting p-adic length scale hypothesis have been accumulating steadily. I would be happy to have time to do the little checks just now but it must wait for a few weeks until (as I hope) I get this maddening computational project to a good shape.

Addition (2.7. 2009): I finally found time to perform the check. The prediction of p-adic mass calculations for the mass of s quark is 105 MeV (see page 12 of p-Adic Particle Massivation: Hadron Masses) so that the mass difference can be understood if the second s-quark in Ωb has mass which is twice the "standard" value. Therefore the strange finding about Ωb gives additional support for quantum TGD. I am just wondering how much is still required to wake up the sleeping colleagues from their F-theoretic dreams.

The reader interested in p-adic mass calculations in the case of hadrons and willing to do the little check her- or himself can consult the chapter p-Adic Particle Massivation: Hadron Masses of "p-Adic Length Scale Hypothesis And Dark Matter Hierarchy".

Monday, May 11, 2009

Oxford, Twistors, and Penrose

There is some discussion in Kea's blog about Oxford, Penrose, and twistors and also my response. I decided to correct the typos and add it also to my own blog since it gives a non-technical report about how I have been spending my time during last months.

Twistors allow an impressive organization of ordinary Feynman diagrams of gauge theories. Instead of calculating an immense number of individual diagrams you get their sum as single twistor diagram. The minimal function for twistor diagrams would be this kind of organization.

Twistor diagrams inspire also more ambitious ideas. The notion of plane wave is usually taken as given but twistors suggest as basic objects the analogs of light-rays which are waves completely localized in directions transverse to momentum direction. These are perfectly ok quantum objects since de-localization still takes place in the direction of momentum. Parton picture in QCD strongly suggest them physically. Also quantum classical correspondence becomes especially clear for them: quantum states in particle experiment would really look what they do look in laboratory. There are excellent reasons to expect that IR divergences of gauge theories are eliminated by transverse localization.

The condition that twistor structure exists in space-time is also quite a constraint and suggests strongly that higher dimensional theories should use M4× S type space so that the higher-dimensional space would not be dynamical. M4 of course has also other marvelous properties: light-cone boundary in M4 is metrically 2-D and allows generalized conformal invariance (I wonder how many times I have said this without absolutely any effect on colleagues: they simply cannot take me seriously for the fraction of minute needed to realize "Hey, this guy is right!").

In spirit of twistorialization program of Penrose I proposed some time ago how space-time surfaces representing preferred extremals of Kähler action in M4× CP2 and coding locally basic data for light rays (local momentum direction and polarization essential for twistor concept) could be lifted to holomorphic surfaces in 12-D T× CP2 or 10-D PT× CP2.

The surprise was that for surfaces which are not representable as graphs of a map M4→CP2 ("non-pertubative phase" for which QFT in M4 description does not make sense) the surfaces would have dimension higher than 4: D=6,8,10. Maybe there is a connection with branes of M-theory and TGD.

Twistors are also highly powerful idea generators. Twistor concept led through a rather funny interlude to the realization that QFT limit of TGD must be based on Dirac action coupled to gauge bosons without any YM action. The counterpart of YM action is generated radiatively so that all gauge couplings are predicted provided the loop integration can be carried out so that divergences disappear. Gauge boson propagator would have standard form apart for normalization factor which represents square of gauge coupling.

The basic problem is definition of the cutoff of momentum integration and zero energy ontology and p-adic length scale hypothesis force this cutoff physically and allow a geometric interpretation for it in terms of fractal hierarchy of causal diamonds within causal diamonds. Theory produces realistically the basic aspects of coupling constant evolution for standard model gauge couplings apart from gauge boson loops. The values of fine structure constant at electron and intermediate boson length scale fix the two parameters - call them a and b, characterizing the cutoff in hyperbolic angle to two very natural values. b is exponent and exactly equal to b=1/3 by argument based on analyticity (no fractional powers of logarithms). Second one is coefficient equal to a=0.22050469512552 if fine structure constant is required exactly in electron length scale (this means of course over accuracy). Taking analyticity argument seriously, one can say that fine structure constant is predicted in intermediate gauge boson length scale.

It turned out that massivation of gauge bosons occurs unless the hyperbolic cutoffs for time-like and space-like momenta are related in a unique manner. The hyperbolic cutoff is the ad hoc element of the model, and the next project is to find whether the proposed model in which quantum criticality would fix the UV cutoff in hyperbolic angle really does it and whether it leads to the hyperbolic cutoff forced by the values of fine structure constant at electron and intermediate gauge boson length scale.

This involves rather heavy numerical calculations using rather primitive tools [just MATLAB (afforded by a friend since Helsinki University long time ago found it impossible to help by providing program packages like Mathematica), no symbol manipulation packages, no young left-brainy students] and represents quite a challenge for my 58 year old badly right-halved brain.

I have organized the work on twistors and emergence of gauge boson propagators to two new chapters: Twistors, N=4 Super-Conformal Symmetry, and Quantum TGD and Quantum Field Theory Limit of TGD from Bosonic Emergence of "Towards M-matrix".

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

First indications for flavor changing neutral currents?

Tommaso Dorigo talks in his blog posting titled "Hera's intgriguing top candidates" about indications for single top quark production by neutral currents. The eprint by H1 collaboration can be found in the archive.

This kind of processes would be mediated by flavor changing neutral currents forbidden in the standard model. TGD predicts exotic gauge bosons inducing this kind of processes. In TGD framework flavor is due to the topology of the wormhole throat at which the fermionic quantum numbers reside (see this and this). Fermions correspond to CP2 type vacuum extremals topologically condensed to the background space-time sheet and there is only single wormhole throat. At the throat the induced metric changes its signature from Euclidian to Minkowskian so that the orbit of wormhole throat defines a light-like 3-surface. The topology of the wormhole throat in orientable case is characterized by genus (handle number) so that one obtains sphere, torus, sphere with two handles, etc... There is a nice argument explaining why just the three lowest topologies correspond to stable and light fermions.

Gauge bosons correspond to wormhole contacts-pieces of CP2 type vacuum extremals with Euclidian signature of metric connecting two Minkowskian space-time sheets. There are two wormhole throats so that gauge bosons are classified by pairs (g1,g2) of genera for throats. It is natural to arrange fermions and bosons to representations of dynamical SU(3) group which could be called flavour SU(3) but having not much to do with the ancient flavor SU(3) of Gell-Mann. For fermions/antifermions one obtains triplets/antitriplets and for gauge bosons octet and singlet as the tensor product of triplet and anti-triplet. Singlet is identified as ordinary gauge bosons and octet gives rise to exotic gauge bosons inducing flavor changing neutral currents. If the p-adic mass scale of the exotics is higher than that for standard gauge bosons, one can understand their experimental absence.

CKM mixing in TGD framework is induced by different mixings of topologies of wormhole throat in the case of U and D type quarks. In absence of this mixing the neutral flavor changing currents would change the flavor of both interacting fermions: in the recent case electron and u or c quark transforming to top quark. Already these reactions would be something completely new and could be mediated by both gluons, Z0 bosons and also by W bosons in which new kind of charged flavor changing current would be in question. CKM mixing makes possible also reactions in which only other fermion changes its flavor. In the recent case it would be quark whereas electron would transform to electron rather than muon or τ.

If the top in the wrong place is not just dirt- that is statistical fluctuation - what it very probably is - it could be interpreted as a first evidence for the existence of the predicted octet of gauge bosons inducing flavor changing transitions. Also octets of W bosons and gluons are predicted whereas the possibly detected transition would correspond to the exchange of octet Z0. Also the possibly higher rate for transitions with correlated change of flavor for electron and top (say e to τ and and u to top) could kill the proposal.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Pieces of something bigger?

John Baez has a very interesting posting about representations of 2-groups. I wish I time to look in more detail what he is saying. I can only I hope that the posting would find readers. John Baez is a mathematical physicists who has the rare gift of representing new mathematical ideas in an extremely inspiring and transparent manner.

My impression was that John and others regard as a problem that the representations for 2-counterparts of Lie groups seem to reduce to representations of permutation groups for a discrete set of objects. The reason is basically that at the level of abstraction they are working the points of n-dimensional space are replaced with n-tuples of linear spaces of varying dimensions. Vector space replaces the point of the vector space. For ordinary vector spaces one has a continuum of different choices of basis vectors transformed to each other by matrices representing group elements. One cannot however superpose linearly vector spaces and representation matrices can just permute the vector spaces forming the components of the vector. For instance, for Poincare group the representations would be induced from the representations of discrete subgroups of Lorentz group known as Fuschian groups and realized in terms of discrete Möbius transformations of complex plane (Fuschian groups).

I am not sure whether I would like to see this as a problem. Categories, quantum groups, n-groups, hyper-finite factors and their inclusions, etc.. arise in TGD in a close association with the notion of finite measurement resolution which among other things led to a stringy formulation of quantum TGD and to a precise formulation of QFT limit of TGD allowing to predict the values of gauge coupling strengths.

At space-time and imbedding space level finite measurement resolution has discreteness as a space-time correlate. Discrete groups are obviously a natural correlate for the finite measurement resolution when one speaks about symmetries. If there is a connection, this discretization - something very concrete- could have also interpretation in terms of an abstraction process in which one replaces points with vector spaces. Could it really be that these mathematicians are becoming conscious of the mathematics needed to realize elegantly the basic physical picture of quantum TGD? Maybe we indeed are pieces of a Very Great Mind and our feeling about working independently is only an illusion. In Great Experiences, which we may have once or twice during lifetime, we can experience directly a contact with this Great Mind and may have the mysterious and paradoxical Brahman=Atman experience of actually being the Great Mind ourselves. Just asking;-).

Sigh of relief

As I have already told, TGD leads naturally to the idea that mere Dirac action with coupling to gauge potentials defines QFT limit of TGD: the reason is that only fermions appear as fundamental particles in TGD framework. This action generates YM action radiatively and predicts all coupling strengths. Somewhat amusingly, this kind of possibility -something extremely beautiful and incredibly simple for me at least- has not been noticed previously (to my best knowledge).

The realization of this idea requires the TGD based notions of zero energy ontology and geometric realization of finite measurement resolution. These concepts indeed lead to a highly unique physical realization of cutoffs in momentum and hyperbolic angle. The reason for two cutoffs is that the momentum integral is Minkowskian: Wick rotation would lead to a mathematical catastrophe in TGD framework and would not be in spirit with Lorentz invariance.

The UV cutoff for hyperbolic angle measured in the rest system of a particle emitting virtual particle is the basic ad hoc element of the model. It is not clear whether it can be deduced within the framework defined by QFT limit or whether only basic quantum TGD predict it. Quantum criticality suggests that the cutoff must be such that a large number of p-adic length scales contributes to the loop integrals so that one obtains interesting coupling constant evolution. In standard QFT the absence of this kind of cutoff would mean that too many length scales involved so that one ends up with divergences. In TGD framework this would mean vanishing gauge boson propagators and a trivial theory. If cutoff is too strong, gauge boson couplings are predicted to be very weak and this is also unsatisfactory situation.

Situation is very much analogous to thermodynamical criticality or criticality for spin glass phase. Above critical temperature there is chaos and below it complete order. This vision leads to a model for the cutoff which gives excellent hopes of coupling constant evolution consistent with standard model. The condition that the values of the fine structure constant at electron and intermediate gauge boson mass scales are reproduced correctly fixes the two parameters of the model and the value of the second parameter is consistent with p-adicization and number theoretical vision. Also the behavior in UV is reasonable and the predictions for other bare couplings follow and are sensible. Gauge boson loops allow to understand the non-abelian aspects of coupling constant evolution and asymptotic freedom.

I have been fighting with the precise calculation of the normalization factor of the bosonic propagator determined by fermionic loop integral. I had to work really hardly to end up with formulas consistent with the calculation at the limit of vanishing momentum squared- one factor of two was missing and one exponent n=1 had changed to n=2 and it was really maddening exercise to identify the mistakes! For the original model for which it was assumed that the measurement resolution for the time scale of CDs is maximal and thus of order CP2 time scale, the range of the allowed hyperbolic angles was predicted to be extremely narrow in longer length scales so that loops effectively disappeared. As a consequence, the coupling constant evolution became essentially trivial except immediately above UV scale. The attempts to save this model were futile. The model for which time scale resolution corresponds to a fraction of p-adic time scale characterizing the sub-CD in question rather than smallest possible sub-CD, loop integrals receive contributions from all scales and a realistic coupling constant evolution is obtained. But as already mentioned, the quantitative expression for cutoff should be deduced from quantum TGD proper or perhaps from the consistency with the results produced by subtraction procedures in standard QFT.

I have not yet corrected the errors in the formulas in previous postings and encourage the interested reader to can consult the new chapter Quantum Field Theory Limit of TGD from Bosonic Emergence of "Towards M-matrix".

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Emergent boson propagators, fine structure constant, and hierarchy of Planck constants

I have already discussed the bootstrap approach to S-matrix assuming that boson propagators emerge from fermionic self-energy loops (see this, this, and also the new chapter Quantum Field Theory Limit of TGD from Bosonic Emergence of "Towards M-matrix").

There are several interesting questions. Are there any hopes that this approach can predict correctly the evolution of gauge coupling constants - in particular that of fine structure constant? The emergence of bosonic propagator from a fermionic loop means that it is inversely proportional to gauge coupling strength and thus to hbar. What does this mean from the point of view of the hierarchy of Planck constants?

Is it possible to understand the value of fine structure constant in bootstrap approach to S-matrix?

The basic test for the theory is whether it can predict correctly the value of fine structure constant for reasonable choice of the UV and IR cutoffs. In the first approximation one can assume that photons has only U(1) couplings to fermions so that the fermion-fermion scattering amplitude at electron's p-adic length scale is determined by the photon propagator alone.

  1. One can start from the normalization factor of the inverse of the bare gauge boson propagator

    GB= [p2gμν- pμpν]× ∑Qi2 X(ηmax),

    where the function X(ηmax) can be calculated once the UV cutoff mass squared and in hyperbolic angle is known (Wick rotation would eliminate the hyperbolic cutoff but does not make sense in TGD framework). The sum is over the fermions with charges Qi. For three lepton and quark generations one would have ∑Qi2=16. The normalization factor equals to 1/g2, where g is the bare gauge boson coupling constant so that one can pose physical constraints in order to deduced information about hyperbolic cutoff.

  2. The realization of the cutoff for the mass of the virtual particle in terms of p-adic mass scale m ≤ m(CP2)/p1/2 is on a strong basis. The ad hoc assumption is the form for the cutoff in the hyperbolic angle. The cutoff means that the allowed range of 3-momenta for time-like momenta and of energies for time-like momenta of off mass shell particle is rather narrow for a given mass. What is clear is that any extension of the allowed phase space increases the value of X and requires larger pmin for this form of cutoff.

  3. The narrow cutoff in the fermionic loop momenta could be interpreted physically in terms of the fermion-anti-fermion bound state character of bosons restricting the range of the virtual momenta of the fermion and anti-fermion to a very narrow range in the rest system of the boson. This is natural if fermion and antifermion reside at the opposite throats of the wormhole contact. In the case of virtual bosons radiated by leptons this restriction would not apply.

  4. There is also second interpretation for the narrow cutoff. The rest system of sub-CD in which the fermionic loop is calculated is assumed to be the rest system of the virtual particle. Otherwise one would obtain a breaking of Lorentz invariance. This requirement could provide an alternative justification for the cutoff in cosh(η) since for too large values of η identified as the hyperbolic angle assignable to the lower tip of sub-CD the Lorentz transform of the time coordinate T(p) = pT(CP2) of the upper tip of sub-CD is T=cosh(η)×pT(CP2), and could be so large that the upper tip belongs outside CD.

  5. The original belief based on an erratic formula for the d4k in terms of mass squared and hyperbolic angle was that no gauge boson mass is generated radiatively since space-like and time-like contributions to the loop integral would compensate each other. This belief turned out to be wrong and the requirement that mass term is vanishing fixes uniquely the relationship between hyperbolic cutoffs for time-like and space-like momenta. Hence only the cutoff in time-like region must be fixed.

I have done numerical experimentation with several kinds of cutoffs and done impressive amount of number of numerical errors during this experimentation.
  1. The basic constraint on the cutoff is that it predicts reasonably well the values of the fine structure constant at electron and intermediate gauge boson length scales. Also its value in ultraviolet should be reasonable. This suggests that the the cutoff depends on the logarithm of p-adic length scale - that is k. Hence the most plausible cutoff for time-like loop momenta is of the form

    sinh(η)≤ 1+a × k-b .

    a and b are parameters fixed by the basic constraints. The cutoff for space-like momenta is completely determined by the condition that gauge bosons are massless.

  2. Geometrically the cutoff means that the maximal variation of the maximal temporal distance between the tips of the Lorentz transformed CD corresponds to the measurement resolution ΔT=a2T(k)k-2b. The optimal choice for b is b=1/3 and predicts that the contribution from kth p-adic length scale to the propagator is inversely proportional to the p-adic length scale. The resulting value of a is a= 0.22050469512552 and predicts correctly the value of fine structure constant both in electron and intermediate gauge boson length scale.

The predictions for other gauge couplings
One can also look for the predictions for color and electro-weak coupling constants.
  1. The loop is proportional to N(Bi) = Tr(Qi2). The charge matrices are IiL for W bosons and I3L- pQem, p=sin2W) for Z0. For the coupling of Kähler gauge potential the charge matrix is QK=1 for leptons and QK=1/3 quarks: it is easy to see that in this case the normalization factor is same as photon. The traces of non-Abelian charge matrices in fundamental representations are Tr(Ta2)=-1/2 in the standard normalization. For photon and gluons both right and left handed chiralities contribute and W bosons only left handed.

  2. This gives the following expressions for the normalization factors N(Bi)

    α(Bi)= (N(γ)/N(Bi))× αem ,

    with

    N(γ)=N(U(1))= 16 , N(g)= 6 , N(W)=6 , N(Z)= 6-12p+13p2 .

    The values of the gauge couplings strengths are given by

    αs= (8/3)αem , α(W)=(8/3)αem , α(Z)= (16/(6-12p+13p2em .

    Electro-weak couplings are unified only if one has p= 12/13, from p=3/8 obtained by definition the ratio αemW, which is also the typical prediction of GUTs.

  3. Coupling constant evolution is assigned with the dependence on IR cutoff with UV cutoff defined by 2-adic length scale. The predictions for the bare couplings for k=2 are αem-1= 38.2719, αs-1W-1= 14.5255, and αZ-1 = 8.0571 by assuming b=1/3 and posing the above described conditions p2=0 limit for virtual photon mass squared.

Cutoff in the general case

The previous calculations were carried by identifying the UV cutoff as 2-adic length scale. The calculations can be generalized to an UV cutoff defined by any p-adic length scale with pmin ≈ 2kmin. The Lorentz transforms of sub-CDs must belong inside CD within measurement resolution, which means that the condition sinh(η) ≤ =a× k-b for p≈ 2k is satisfied. k ≥ kmin holds of course true.

The definition of the UV cutoff for vertex corrections involves non-trivial delicacies.

  1. The problem is following. In the vertex correction for FFB vertex the ends of the virtual boson line in general correspond to fermions with different four-momenta and the hyperbolic angle η must be assigned to the rest system of either initial or final state fermion. The choice means a selection of the arrow of geometric time and breaking of T invariance. The requirement of CPT symmetry is expected to fix the choice.

  2. Similar situation is encountered also in basic quantum TGD. In the construction of the counterpart of stringy diagrammatics the CP breaking instanton variant of Kähler action contributes to the modified Dirac action a term whose appearance in the vertices makes the theory non-trivial . One must decide, which end of the line carries the CP breaking CP term. CPT invariance is the natural constraint on the choice. The idea about fermions (anti-fermions) as particles propagating to the geometric future (past) suggests that CP breaking term is associated with the negative energy fermion (positive energy anti-fermion) at the future (past) end of the line. CP symmetry is broken since CP takes fermion to anti-fermion but does not permute the end of the lines. CPT is respected.

  3. In the recent case the counterpart of CP and T breaking would be the assignment of the cutoff to the past (future) end in the case of fermions (antifermions). If one assigns the cutoff in both cases to (say) future end, CPT breaking results. It is important to notice that the distinction between future and past is always unique in the rest system of the sub-CD.

How the amplitudes depend on hbar?

TGD predicts a hierarchy of Planck constants and the question concerns the dependence of the loop corrections on hbar.

  1. Unless the p-adic cutoff for cosh(η) depends on hbar, boson propagator cannot involve hbar, and this is achieved by putting g=hbar1/2 so that 1/hbar factor associated with the loop cancels g2=hbar. This means that loops give no powers of 1/hbar as in ordinary quantum field theories. By checking a sufficient number of diagrams one can get convinced that the hbar dependence of the diagram depends on the total number of particles involved with the diagram and is given by the proportionality hbar(Nin+Nout)/2-1.

  2. This simple dependence of the amplitudes on hbar suggests that it has actually no physical content. The scaling of the incoming and outgoing wave functions by hbar-1/2 and the division of the amplitude by hbar indeed makes the amplitudes independent of hbar. In unitarity conditions the 1/hbar factors from d3k/2E factors assignable to intermediate states correspond to the hbar-1/2 factors of the states involved. Therefore QFT limit defined in this manner does not distinguish between different values of hbar and the difference is seen only at the level of kinematics (1/hbar scaling of the frequencies and wave-vectors for a fixed four-momentum). The difference would become dynamically visible through the fact that the space-time surfaces associated with CDs with different values of hbar are not simply scaled up versions of each other.

  3. This result is in contrast with the standard QFT expectations about how the amplitudes should behave as functions of hbar. One of the motivations for the hierarchy of Planck constants was that radiative corrections come in powers of 1/hbar so that large values of Planck constant improves the convergence of the perturbation series in powers of coupling constant strengths. If coupling constants emerge in the proposed manner, this motivation for large values of Planck constants is lost.

Note added: I have updated and shortend this posting several times as the mathematical and physical understanding of the model have developed and as I have discovered various numerical errors in calculations. The recent picture is quite satisfactory but numerical errors could still be present. Hyperbolic cutoff is obviously the ad hoc element of the model and the model hoped to predicting the hyperbolic cutoff from quantum criticality is a work in progress.

For a summary of the recent situation concerning TGD and twistors the reader can consult the new chapter Quantum Field Theory Limit of TGD from Bosonic Emergence of "Towards M-matrix".

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Still about the emergence of bosonic propagators and vertices

In TGD Universe only fermions are fundamental particles and bosons can be identified as their bound states. This suggest that in the possibly existing QFT type description bosonic propagators and vertices must emerge from the fermionic propagators and from the fundamental fermion-boson vertex appearing in Dirac action with a minimal coupling to gauge bosons. In the earlier posting I discussed how the emergence can be understood in terms of path integral approach (see also the new chapter Twistors, N=4 Super-Conformal Symmetry, and Quantum TGD of "Towards M-matrix"). The nice feature of the approach is that there are no free parameters in the theory. In particular, the counterparts of gauge couplings are predictions of the theory. In this posting I represent some further comments about the resulting Feynman diagrammatics.

  1. Consider first the exponent of the action exp(iSc) resulting in fermionic path integral. The exponent
    exp[i∫ d4xd4y ξbar(x)GF(x-y)ξ(y)]=
    exp[i∫ d4kξbar(-k)GF(k)ξ(k)]
    is combinatorially equivalent with the sum over n-point functions of a theory representing free fermions constructed using Wick's rules that is by connecting n Grassmann spinors and their conjugates in all possible ways by the fermion propagator GF.

  2. The action of
    exp[i∫ d4x (δ/δ ξbar(x))γ • A(x) (δ/δ ξ(x))]
    = exp[i∫ d4k d4k1 (δ/δ ξbar(k-k_1))γ• A(-k) (δ/δ ξ (k_1))]
    on diagrams consisting of n free fermion lines gives sum over all diagrams obtained by connecting fermion and anti-fermion ends of two fermion lines and inserting to the resulting vertex A(k) such that momentum is conserved. This gives sum over all closed and open fermion lines containing n ≥2 boson insertions. The diagram with single gauge boson insertion gives a term proportional to Aμ(k=0) ∫ d4k kμk-2, which vanishes.

  3. Sc as obtained in the fermionic path integral is the generating functional for connected many-fermion diagrams in an external gauge boson field and represented as sum over diagrams in which one has either closed fermion loop or open fermion line with n ≥2 bosons attached to it. The two parts of Sc have interpretation as the counterparts of YM action for gauge bosons and Dirac action for fermions involving arbitrary high gauge invariant n-boson couplings besides the standard coupling. An expansion in powers of γμDμ is suggestive. Arbitrary number of gauge bosons can appear in the bosonic vertices defined by the closed fermion loops and gauge invariance must pose strong constraints on the bosonic part of the action if expressible in terms of bosonic gauge invariants. The closed fermion loop with n=2 gauge boson insertions defines the bosonic kinetic term and bosonic propagator. The sign of the kinetic terms comes out correctly thanks to the minus sign assigned to the fermion loop.

  4. Feynman diagrammatics is constructed for Sc using standard Feynman rules. In ordinary YM theory ghosts are needed for gauge fixing and this seems to be the case also now.

  5. One can consider also the presence of Higgs bosons. Also the Higgs propagator would be generated radiatively and would be massless for massless fermions as the study of the fermionic self energy diagram shows. Higgs would be necessary CP2 vector in M4×CP2 picture and E4 vector in M8=M4×E4 picture. It is not clear whether one can describe Higgs simply as an M4 scalar. Note that TGD allows in principle Higgs boson but - according to the recent view - it does not play a role in particle massivation.

The diagrammatics differs from the Feynman diagrammatics of standard gauge theories in some respects.

  1. 1-P irreducible self energy insertions involve always at least one gauge boson line since the simplest fermionic loop has become the inverse of the bosonic propagator. Fermionic self energy loops in gauge theories tends to spoil asymptotic freedom in gauge theories. In the recent case the lowest order self-energy corrections to the propagators of non-abelian gauge bosons correspond to bosonic loops since fermionic loops define propagators. Hence asymptotic freedom is suggestive.

  2. The only fundamental vertex is AFFbar vertex. As already found, there seems no point in attaching to the vertex an explicit gauge coupling constant g. If this is however done n-boson vertices defined by loops are proportional to gn. In gauge theories n-boson vertices are proportional to gn-2 so that a formal consistency with the gauge theory picture is achieved for g=1. In each internal boson line the g2 factor coming from the ends of the bosonic propagator line is canceled by the g-2 factor associated with the bosonic propagator. In S-matrix the division of the bosonic propagator from the external boson lines implies gn proportionality of an n-point function involving n gauge bosons. This means asymmetry between fermions and bosons unless one has g=1. Gauge couplings could be identified by transferring the normalization factor of gauge boson propagators to fermion-boson interaction vertices so that bosonic propagators would have standard normalization. The counterparts of gauge coupling constants could be identified from the amplitudes for 2-fermion scattering by comparison with the predictions of standard gauge theories. The small value of effective g obtained in this manner would correspond to a large deviation of the normalization factor of the radiatively generated boson propagator from its standard value.

  3. Furry's theorem holding true for Abelian gauge theories implies that all closed loops with an odd number of Abelian gauge boson insertions vanish. This conforms with the expectation that 3-vertices involving Abelian gauge bosons must vanish by gauge invariance. In the non-abelian case Furry's theorem does not hold true so that non-Abelian 3-boson vertices are obtained.

For a summary of the recent situation concerning TGD and twistors the reader can consult the new chapter Quantum Field Theory Limit of TGD from Bosonic Emergence of "Towards M-matrix".

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Twistors and TGD: a summary

The encounter between twistors and TGD turned out to be extremely fruitful. I spent some time with the idea about replacing loop momenta in Feynman diagrams with light-like ones in order to achieve twistorialization (or rather spinorialization) of Feynman graphs but - as it sometimes happens - a silly idea stimulated the right question, and after 31 years of hard work I have a proposal for precise rules of Feynman diagrammatics producing UV finite and unitary S-matrix. I glue below the introduction to the new chapter Twistors, N=4 Super-Conformal Symmetry, and Quantum TGD of "Towards M-matrix" in the hope that it give an overall view about the situation.

Twistors - a notion discovered by Penrose - have provided a fresh approach to the construction of perturbative scattering amplitudes in Yang-Mills theories and in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. This approach was pioneered by Witten. The latest step in the progress was the proposal by Nima Arkani-Hamed and collaborators that super Yang Mills and super gravity amplitudes might be formulated in 8-D twistor space possessing real metric signature (4,4). The questions considered below are following.

  1. Could twistor space could provide a natural realization of N=4 super-conformal theory requiring critical dimension D=8 and signature metric (4,4)? Could string like objects in TGD sense be understood as strings in twistor space? More concretely, could one in some sense lift quantum TGD from M4×CP2 to 8-D twistor space T so that one would have three equivalent descriptions of quantum TGD.

  2. Could one construct the preferred extremals of Kähler action in terms of twistors -may be by mimicking the construction of hyper-quaternionic resp. co-hyper-quaternionic surfaces in M8 as surfaces having hyper-quaternionic tangent space resp. normal space at each point with the additional property that one can assign to each point x a plane M2(x) subset M4 as sub-space or as sub-space defined by light-like tangent vector in M4. Could one mimic this construction by assigning to each point of X4 regarded as a 4-surface in T a 4-D plane of twistor space satisfying some conditions making possible the interpretation as a tangent plane and guaranteing the existence of a map of X4 to a surface in M4×CP2. Could twistor formalism help to resolve the integrability conditions involved?

  3. Could one modify the notion of Feynman diagram by allowing only massless loop momenta so that twistor formalism could be used in elegant manner to calculate loop integrals and whether the resulting amplitudes are finite in TGD framework where only fermions are elementary particles? Could one modify Feynman diagrams to twistor diagrams by replacing momentum eigenstates with light ray momentum eigenstates completely localized in transversal degrees of freedom?

The arguments of this chapter suggest some these questions might have affirmative answers.

Twistors at space-time level

Consider first the twistorialization at the classical space-time level.

  1. One can assign twistors to only 4-D Minkowski space (also to other than Lorentzian signature). One of the challenges of the twistor program is how to define twistors in the case of a general curved space-time. In TGD framework the structure of the imbedding space allows to circumvent this problem.

  2. The lifting of classical TGD to twistor space level is a natural idea. Consider space-time surfaces representable as graphs of maps M4→ CP2. At classical level the Hamilton-Jacobi structure required by the number theoretic compactification means dual slicings of the M4 projection of the space-time surface X4 by stringy word sheets and partonic two-surfaces. Stringy slicing allows to assign to each point of the projection of X4 two light-like tangent vectors U and V parallel to light-like Hamilton-Jacobi coordinate curves. These vectors define components tildeμ and λ of a projective twistor, and twistor equation assigns to this pair a point m of M4. The conjecture is that for preferred extremals of Kähler action this point corresponds to the M4 projection of the point in the natural M4 coordinates associated with the upper or lower tip of causal diamond CD. If this conjecture is correct one can lift the M4 projection of the space-time surface in CD×CP2 subset M4×CP2 to a surface in PT×CP2, where CP3 is projective twistor space PT=CP3. Also induced spinor fields and induced gauge fields can be lifted to twistor space.

  3. If one can fix the scales of the tangent vectors U and V and fix the phase of spinor λ one can consider also the lifting to 8-D twistor space T rather than 6-D projective twistor space PT. Kind of symmetry breaking would be in question. The proposal for how to achieve this relies on the notion of finite measurement resolution. The scale of V at partonic 2-surface X2 subset dCD×X3l would naturally correlate with the energy of the massless particle assignable to the light-like curve beginning from that point and thus fix the scale of V coordinate. Symplectic triangulation in turn allows to assign a phase factor to each strand of the number theoretic braid as the Kähler magnetic flux associated with the triangle having the point at its center. This allows to lift the stringy world sheets associated with number theoretic braids to their twistor variants but not the entire space-time surface. String model in twistor space is obtained in accordance with the fact that N=4 super-conformal invariance is realized as a string model in a target space with (4,4) signature of metric. Note however that CP2 defines additional degrees of freedom for the target space so that 12-D space is actually in question.

  4. One can consider also a more general problem of identifying the counterparts for the preferred extremals of Kähler action with arbitrary dimensions of M4 and CP2 projections in 10-D space PT×CP2. The key idea is the reduction of field equations to holomorphy as in Penrose's twistor representation of solutions of positive and negative frequency parts of free fields in M4. A very helpful observation is that CP2 as a sub-manifold of PT corresponds to the 2-D space of null rays of the complexified Minkowski space M4c. For the 5-D space N subset PT of null twistors this 2-D space contains 1-dimensional light ray in M4 so that N parametrizes the light-rays of M4. The idea is to consider holomorphic surfaces in PT±×CP2 (± correlates with positive and negative energy parts of zero energy state) having dimensions D=6,8, 10; restrict them to N×CP2, select a sub-manifold of light-rays from N, and select from each light-ray subset of points which can be discrete or portion of the light-ray in order to get a 4-D space-time surface. If integrability conditions for the resulting distribution of light-like vectors U and V can be satisfied (in other words they are gradients), a good candidate for a preferred extremal of Kähler action is obtained. Note that this construction raises light-rays to a role of fundamental geometric object.

Twistors and Feynman diagrams

The recent successes of twistor concept in the understanding of 4-D gauge theories and N=4 SYM motivate the question of how twistorialization could help to understand construction of M-matrix in terms of Feynman diagrammatics or its generalization.

  1. One of the basic problems of twistor program is how to treat massive particles. Massive four-momentum can be described in terms of two twistors but their choice is uniquely only modulo SO(3) rotation. This is ugly and one can consider several cures to the situation.

    1. Number theoretic compactification and hierarchy of Planck constants leading to a generalization of the notion of imbedding space assign to each sector of configuration space defined by a particular CD a unique plane M2 subset M4 defining quantization axes. The line connecting the tips of the CD selects also unique rest frame (time axis). The representation of a light-like four-momentum as a sum of four-momentum in this plane and second light-like momentum is unique and same is true for the spinors λ apart from the phase factors (the spinor associated with M2 corresponds to spin up or spin down eigen state).

    2. The tangent vectors of braid strands define light-like vectors in H and their M4 projection is time-like vector allowing a representation as a combination of U and V. Could also massive momenta be represented as unique combinations of U and V?

    3. One can consider also the possibility to represent massive particles as bound states of massless particles.

    It will be found that one can lift ordinary Feynman diagrams to spinor diagrams and integrations over loop momenta correspond to integrations over the spinors characterizing the momentum.

  2. One assign to ordinary momentum eigen states spinor λ but it is not clear how to identify the spinor tildeμ needed for a twistor.

    1. Could one assign tildeμ to spin polarization or perhaps to the spinor defined by the light-like M2 part of the massive momentum? Or could λ and tildeμ correspond to the vectors proportional to V and U needed to represent massive momentum?

    2. Or is something more profound needed? The notion of light-ray is central for the proposed construction of preferred extremals. Should momentum eigen states be replaced with light ray momentum eigen states with a complete localization in degrees of freedom transversal to light-like momentum? This concept is favored both by the notion of number theoretic braid and by the massless extremals (MEs) representing "topological light rays" as analogs of laser beams and serving as space-time correlates for photons represented as wormhole contacts connecting two parallel MEs. The transversal position of the light ray would bring in tildeμ. This would require a modification of the perturbation theory and the introduction of the ray analog of Feynman propagator. This generalization would be M4 counterpart for the highly successful twistor diagrammatics relying on twistor Fourier transform but making sense only for the (2,2) signature of Minkowski space.

  3. In perturbation theory one can also consider the crazy idea of restricting the loop momenta to light-like momenta so that the auxiliary M2 twistors would not be needed at all. This idea failed but led to a first precise proposal for how Feynman diagrammatics producing unitarity and UV finite S-matrix could emerge from TGD, where only fermions are elementary particles and all coupling constants are in principle predictions of the theory. Emergence would mean that the fundamental action is just the Dirac action with gauge boson couplings and containing no bosonic kinetic term, that the perturbative functional integral over the fermion fields in the construction of the effective action induces bosonic kinetic term radiatively, and that a further perturbative functional integral over the gauge boson fields gives an effective action in which all bosonic n-point functions have emerged from the fermionic dynamics. Physically this would mean that bosons interact only when the wormhole contact representing boson and carrying fermion and antifermion quantum numbers at the opposite light-like wormhole throats decays to a pair of fermion and anti-fermion represented by CP2 type extremals with single wormhole throat only. Even fermionic propagators would emerge radiatively from the modified Dirac operator in more fundamental description . What is remarkable is that p-adic length scale hypothesis and the notion of finite measurement resolution lead to a precise proposal how UV divergences are tamed in a description taking into account the finite measurement resolution.

To sum up, perhaps the most important outcome of the interaction of twistor approach with TGD is a proposal for precise Feynman rules allowing to construct unitary and UV finite S-matrix. This realizes a 31 year old dream to a surprisingly high degree. Everything would emerge radiatively from the modified Dirac operator and boson-fermion vertices dictated by the charge matrix of the boson coding boson as a fermion-antifermion bilinear.

For a summary of the recent situation concerning TGD and twistors the reader can consult the new chapter Twistors, N=4 Super-Conformal Symmetry, and Quantum TGD of "Towards M-matrix".

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Bootstrap approach to obtain a unitary S-matrix

In TGD framework S-matrix must be constructed without the help of path integral. The replacement of the loop momenta with light-like momenta does not eliminate UV divergences and the worst situation is encountered for gauge boson vertex corrections. This suggests a bootstrap program in which one starts from very simple basic structures and generates the remaining n-point functions as radiative corrections. The success of twistorial unitary cut method in massless gauge theories suggests that its basic results such as recursive generation of tree diagrams might be given a status of axioms. The idea that loop momenta are light-like cannot be however be taken too seriously. Also massive particles should be treated in practical approach.

The dream

Let us summarize the first variant of the dream about bootstrap approach.

  1. In Construction of Quantum Theory: M-Matrix of "Towards M-Matrix" I have discussed how both field theoretic and stringy variants of the fermion propagator could arise via radiative self energy insertions described by a fundamental 2-vertex giving a contribution proportional to pkγk and leading a propagator containing the counterpart as a mass term expressed in terms of CP2 gamma matrices so that massive particles can have fixed M4×CP2 chirality.

  2. In TGD bosons are identified as bound states of fermion and antifermion at opposite wormhole throats so that bosonic n-vertex would correspond to the decay of bosons to fermion pairs in the loop. Purely bosonic gauge boson couplings would be generated radiatively from triangle and box diagrams involving only fermion-boson couplings. Even bosonic propagator would be generated as a self-energy loop: bosons would propagate by decaying to fermion-antifermion pair and then fusing back to the boson. Gauge theory dynamics would be emergent and bosonic couplings would have form factors with IR and UV behaviors allowing finiteness of the loops constructed from them.

As already found this dream about emergence is killed by the general arguments already discussed demonstrating that one encounters UV divergences already in the construction of gauge boson propagator for both light-like and free loop momenta. The physical reason for the emergence of these divergences and also their cure at the level of principle is well-understood in TGD Universe.

  1. The description in terms of number theoretic braids based on the notion of finite measurement resolution should resolve these divergences at the expense of locality.

  2. Zero energy ontology brings into the picture also the natural breaking of translational and Lorentz symmetries caused by the selection of CD. This breaking is compensated at the level of configuration space since all Poincare transforms of CDs are allowed in the construction of the configuration space geometry.

  3. If this approach is accepted then for given CD there are natural IR and UV cutoffs for 3-momentum (perhaps more naturally for these than for mass squared). IR cutoff is quantified by the temporal distance between the tips of CD and UV cutoff by similar temporal distance of smallest CD allowed by length scale resolution. If the hypothesis that the temporal distances come as octaves of fundamental time scale given by CP2 time scale T0 and implying p-adic length scale hypothesis, the situation is fixed. A weaker condition is that the distances come as prime multiples pT0 of T0.

  4. QFT type idealization would make sense in finite measurement resolution and the loop integrals would be both IR and UV finite.

This leads to a modified form of the dream.

  1. Concerning propagators there are two options: only fermionic propagators are allowed and bosonic propagators emerge or both fermionic and bosonic propagators appear as fundamental objects. Only boson-fermion coupling characterizing the decay of a wormhole contact to two CP2 type almost vacuum extremals with single wormhole throat carrying fermion and anti-fermion number would be feeded to the theory as something given and all vertices involving more than one boson would result as radiative corrections. Boson-fermion coupling would be proportional to Kähler coupling strength fixed by quantum criticality and very near or equal to fine structure constant at electron's p-adic length scale for the standard value of Planck constant. If not anything else, this approach would be predictive.

  2. This approach could be tried to both free and light-like loop momenta. For free loop momenta the cutoff would be naturally associated with the mass squared of the virtual particle rather than the energy of a massless particle. Despite its Lorentz invariance one could criticize this kind of UV cutoff because it allows arbitrarily small wavelengths not in accordance with the vision about finite measurement resolution.

The following considerations lead to the conclusion that bosonic propagators could emerge from fermionic ones in the quantum field theory type description and that this description is also favored by the basic structure of quantum TGD. This kind of formulation would simplify enormously the definition of the theory.

Quantitative realization of UV finiteness in terms of p-adic length scale hypothesis and finite measurement resolution

p-Adic fractality suggests an elegant realization of the notion of finite measurement resolution implying the finiteness of the ordinary Feynman integrals automatically but predicting divergences for light-like loop momenta.

  1. For the four-momenta above cutoff-momentum scale defined by the measurement resolution characterized by p-adic mass scale one cannot detect any details of the wave function of the particle inside sub-...-sub-CDs in question. Only the position of sub-...-sub-CD inside CD can be measured with a resolution defined by the cutoff scale. Therefore the number of detectable momentum eigen states does not anymore increase as the momentum scale is doubled but remains unchanged.

  2. Unitarity realized in terms of the Cutkosky rules and in consistency with the finite measurement resolution requires that the density of states factor d3k/2E receives a reduction factor 2-2 as the momentum scale is doubled above the resolution scale in the Feynman integral. This gives an effective reduction factor μ-2L to the Feynman integral.

  3. The cutoffs will be posed on both mass squared and hyperbolic angle. This conforms with the p-adic length scale hypothesis emerging from p-adic mass calculations and with the geometry of CDs. p-Adic length scales come as Lp propto p1/2, p≈ 2k rather than Lp propto p as the proportionality T(p)= pT(CP2) of the temporal distance between tips of the CD combined with Uncertainty Principle would suggest. The reason is that light-like randomness of partonic 3-surfaces means Brownian motion so that Lp propto T(p)1/2 and Mp propto T(p)-1/2 follows. To avoid confusions note that for the conventions that I have used T(p) corresponds to the secondary p-adic length scale Tp,2= p1/2Tp. For electron T(p) corresponds to .1 seconds.

Definition of loop integration

Consider now definition of the integration measure for loop momenta.

  1. It is far from obvious whether the usual definition based on Wick rotation of the Euclidian variant of the integral makes sense in the recent case. The definition based on Wick rotation would eliminate the divergence in the hyperbolic angle leave only a cutoff in k2 > 0 and give quadratic resp. logarithmic divergences for n=1 resp. n=2. This prescription is not favored by the picture suggested by the geometry CDs.

  2. The most natural integration measure is just the standard M4 volume element d4k, which can be written as

    d4k=k3dk× sinh2(η)dη dΩ , k=(kμkμ)1/2

    for time-like momenta and

    4k=k3dk×× cosh2(η)dη dΩ, k=(-kμkμ)1/2

    for space-like momenta. The original calculations contained a silly error due to the naive generalization of the Euclidian integration measure by replacing sin3(θ) with sinh3(η).

  3. The geometry of CDs requires IR and UV cutoffs in both mass squared and hyperbolic angle giving
    pmax-1/2 ≤ (m/m(CP2)≤ pmin-1/2 ,
    sinh(η)≤ sinh(ηmax).
  4. The primes pmax and pmin correspond to IR and UV cutoffs and pmin≥ 2 holds true naturally in QFT limit since stringy excitations having mass scale given by CP2 mass are not included. This means that all loop integrals are finite if also hyperbolic cutoff is present.
  5. The justification for the cutoff in |sinh(η)| comes either from the requirement that the Lorentz transformed sub-CDs to which the fermion loop can be associated remain inside CD within the measurement resolution for temporal distance in the scale corresponding to T(k) or from the condition that the decomposition of the gauge boson to a pair of fermion and antifermion at opposite wormhole throats restricts the range of the virtual momenta to momenta almost at rest in the rest system of boson. The condition that coupling constant evolution is realistic fixes the form of hyperbolic cutoff for time-like momenta in high precision and it remains to be seen whether quantum criticality can be used to predict the hyperbolic cutoff from first principles.
  6. Hyperbolic cutoffs can and must be different for time-like and space-like momenta and the cancellation of the mass term from the bosonic propagator fixes the relationship between these cutoffs uniquely. Hyperbolic cutoffs can and must depend on p-adic length scale so that the integral over loop momenta decomposes to integral over momenta corresponding to p-adic half octaves with a fixed hyperbolic cutoff in each half octave.

The conclusion is that the definition of loop integrals as Euclidian integrals would lead to a catastrophe via the generation of gauge boson mass proportional to the cutoff mass whereas the Minkowskian definition with the notion of cutoff motivated by p-adic length scale hypothesis and hierarchy of causal diamonds keeps gauge bosons massless provided the cutoffs for hyperbolic angle for time-like and space-like loop momenta are related in a unique manner and the only contribution to the boson mass comes from mass terms in the fermionic propagators.

Could bosonic propagators emerge?

My views about whether bosonic propagators can emerge or not have been fluctuating wildly during last weeks. The following argument however suggests that emergent bosonic propagation is a mathematically consistent notion and conforms with the special features of quantum TGD.

  1. In basic quantum TGD modified Dirac equation containing induced spinor connection as induced gauge boson field defines the theory and the exponent of Kähler action emerges as Dirac determinant. The natural guess is that this structure is preserved in the sense that Feynman diagrammatics is defined by Dirac action coupled to gauge potentials but containing no kinetic term for gauge potentials with kinetic terms emerging from the fermionic loops and the values of gauge couplings following as predictions of the formalism.

  2. One can try to formulate this idea in terms of path integral formalism. Couple gauge bosonic field A resp. Grassmann valued fermion fields Ψ to external currents j resp. Grassmann valued external currents ξ and perform Legendre transform giving the exponent of the effective action as a functional integral over Ψ and A. The functional derivatives of the effective action with respect to the ξ and j allow to deduce N-point functions.

  3. The exponent Z=exp(Gc(j,ξ,ξbar)) defined as the functional Fourier transform of the action exponential is the key quantity since its functional derivatives at origin define the connected Green's functions. Z can be calculated in two steps. At the first step one functionally integrates over Ψ and its conjugate. This can be done perturbatively and gives the generating functional for connected fermionic Green's functions for ξ and its conjugate as a functional of gauge fields A. This functional is also analogous to action and contains bosonic kinetic term which is of correct form by the preceding observations. Also interaction terms for A are included and since the original system is gauge invariant also the effective action must be gauge invariant and should reduce to Yang-Mills action in the lowest orders. Perturbation theory is therefore possible and one can calculate effective action by performing the functional integral over A using the induced propagators and vertices. At this step fields ξ are in the role of non-dynamical external fields just as A was at the first step and all propagators are bosonic. From the resulting exponential one can generate connected Green's functions as functional derivatives with respect to the sources.

  4. It seems that the proposed description avoids the most obvious divergences. In particular, the tadpole term from AμΨbar(x)γμΨ(x) proportional to the fermion propagator DF(x,x) proportional to an integral of form ∫d4k kμ/k2 and thus vanishing.

  5. The bosonic kinetic term would be proportional to the over all gauge coupling g2 if one expresses gauge potential in the form gA. This decomposition is however not natural in TGD since the induced spinor connection corresponds to gA with no explicit value of g being specified. In the case of simplest tree diagram describing 2→ 2 fermion scattering that the g2 coming from the ends of the boson line is canceled by the 1/g2 coming from the bosonic propagator so that the predictions of the theory do not depend on the value of g in the lowest order. This looks strange but would conform with the absence of bosonic kinetic term in the primary action making it impossible to identify the value of g in standard manner. One can however say that the numerical coefficient given by the fermionic loop integrals defining the bosonic propagator predicts the values of gauge couplings g through the comparison of their values with the prediction of standard gauge theory for say 2→ 2 scattering. The sign of the kinetic terms comes out correctly thanks to the minus sign assigned to the fermion loop. This picture would conform with the vision that TGD predicts all gauge couplings. Maybe the emergence of gauge boson propagators and vertices could be seen as one aspect of quantum criticality.

These arguments suggest that the notion of emergent gauge boson propagation makes sense mathematically and is favored also by the general structure of quantum TGD. On the other hand, the preceding arguments allow the presence of the bosonic propagators as fundamental objects and do not force to take seriously the idea about emergent gauge boson propagation. This motivates the attempt to debunk the notion once and for all. Consistency with p-adic mass calculations might provide the needed killer argument.

  1. The resulting bosonic mass squared would be in the lowest order sum over products of masses of fermion pairs coupling to the boson. It is far from clear whether this prediction is quantitatively consistent with the predictions of the p-adic mass calculations. This possibility is not of course excluded: boson mass squared is quadratic in fermion masses coupling to the boson and the p-adic primes associated with the fermions are naturally those associated with the boson rather than free fermions so that at least the mass scale comes out correctly. This picture conforms also qualitatively with the fact that mass squared is identified as conformal weight and the eigenvalue of modified Dirac operator related closely to the ground state contribution to the mass can be regarded as complex squares root of conformal weight.

  2. Note that even photon is predicted to be massive unless the fermion and antifermion associated with photon and other massless particles are massless or in so low p-adic temperature that the thermal mass is negligible. Also the p-adic prime associated with massless bosons could be so large that the mass is small.

  3. Boson masses are of course emergent in the sense that they are determined by the masses of the fermion and anti-fermion, which they consist of. The question is whether the emergence of masses takes place via loops rather than p-adic mass calculations in the proposed sense and whether these pictures are equivalent. That loops could provide the fundamental description for boson masses is suggested by the asymmetry between bosons and fermions in the recent form of p-adic mass calculations. The p-adic temperature for bosons must be Tp ≤ 1/2 whereas Tp=1 holds true for fermions, and for fermions the analog of Higgs contribution is negligible whereas for gauge bosons it dominates.

  4. It could be also possible to code p-adic thermodynamics into the Feynman diagrammatics in a more refined manner so that loops would give only corrections to the masses obtained from p-adic mass calculations. Instead of simply feeding in the results of p-adic mass calculations as mass parameters of the fermionic propagators, one could replace S-matrix with M-matrix involving the square root of density matrix describing the real counterpart of the partition function characterizing p-adic thermodynamics. Zero energy state would represent a square root of thermodynamical ensemble involving massless ground states and their conformal excitations rather than only ground states with thermal masses.

The emergence of fermionic Feynman propagator

The emergence of the fermionic propagators from the fundamental propagator 1/D defined by the modified Dirac equation is an attractive starting point for the improved variant of the dream.

  1. The fundamental two-vertex would basically reflect the non-determinism of Kähler action implying the breaking of the effective 3-dimensionality (holography) of the dynamics, and would generate the fermion propagator from the propagator 1/D associated with the modified Dirac action behaving as Minkowski scalar and expressible in terms of CP2 gamma matrices. The vertex would be characterized as pkγk. This would give

    GF= i/[pkγk-D] .

    This expression is consistent with cut unitarity.

  2. The propagator G- is usually identifiable in terms of classical propagators as G-=Gret-Gadv and it seems that one an assume that this propagator is just i×(γkpk-D)δ(p2)sign(p0). It is perhaps needless to restate that light-like loop momenta do not lead to a finite theory under the assumptions motivated by p-adic length scale hypothesis.

From this Feynman propagator and its bosonic counterpart one can build all diagrams and get finite results for a finite momentum cutoff forced by the finite measurement resolution. One could of course worry whether the introduction of the p-adic length scale hierarchy might lead to problems with analyticity and unitarity. It is now clear that the idea about massless loop momenta fails. The idea did not however live for vain since it led to the first concrete quantitatively precise conjecture about how gauge theory could emerge as an approximation of quantum TGD from the basic physical picture behind TGD. I am of course the first admit that the proposed scenario looks horribly ugly against the extreme elegance of gauge theories like N=4 SYM. The tough challenge is to find an elegant mathematical realization of the proposed physical picture and twistor approach might be of considerable help here.

Note added: I have updated and shortened this posting several times as the vision about bosonic emergence has evolved. The recent picture seems rather stable. I have left out detailed formulas and encourage the reader to consult the summary of the recent situation concerning bosonic emergence in quantum TGD framework given in the new chapter Quantum Field Theory Limit of TGD from Bosonic Emergence of "Towards M-matrix".