I would divide my physics development into two stages, one in which I was studying general frameworks like quantum theory, and another in which I was interested in the details of particle physics. As discussed here, it was Marni Sheppeard who really set me on the second road, when she exhibited her decomposition of the CKM matrix in terms of circulants, and I wondered if this could be obtained from F-theory. But it was Alejandro Rivero who ended up being my biggest stimulus in that way - trying to implement his ideas and constructions led me to learn a lot of orthodox theoretical physics.
Two weeks after Carl Brannen returned to vixra, Sheppeard has come out with her first phenomenology paper in years. My thoughts: I disagree with most of the details, but the spirit of it is something to emulate.
Meanwhile, Rivero's constructions have reached the point where they all but single out specific string vacua for investigation. For me, the most valuable ideas are still some of the earlier versions, but it's impressive that he has come this far.
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
Various news
1) Carl Brannen once made a great discovery: the circulant representation of the Koide relation, with parameters a phase of 2/9 radians, and a mass scale of about 313 MeV. Koide acknowledged (section 3.1) the phase relation, but deemed it too difficult to explain for now.
Brannen has now returned to the subject. His overall philosophy may be seen at his site, especially in the "Operator Guide". I do not endorse his framework, but it may help the reader understand his latest paper, and whether it does contain any new progress.
2) There was a PF thread on gravitational vacuum polarization in which the author attributed significance to the sum of the squares of all particle masses. That is the LC&P formula for the square of the Higgs vev.
In the "General physics" category at arxiv (its counterpart of vixra), two papers (1 2) on obtaining the fine-structure constant from consideration of "virtual parapositronium in the vacuum". It could be bogus but it reminds me of various speculations here about the criticality of αem.
Brannen has now returned to the subject. His overall philosophy may be seen at his site, especially in the "Operator Guide". I do not endorse his framework, but it may help the reader understand his latest paper, and whether it does contain any new progress.
2) There was a PF thread on gravitational vacuum polarization in which the author attributed significance to the sum of the squares of all particle masses. That is the LC&P formula for the square of the Higgs vev.
In the "General physics" category at arxiv (its counterpart of vixra), two papers (1 2) on obtaining the fine-structure constant from consideration of "virtual parapositronium in the vacuum". It could be bogus but it reminds me of various speculations here about the criticality of αem.
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Feigenbaum meets Feynman II
I am skeptical about the relationship described in the previous post, but it would be beautiful if true. And there has been progress towards making it plausible.
Perhaps the clearest way to classify the available theoretical approaches is how they interpret the doubling cascade. Feigenbaum's constant has the rather abstract meaning, of describing "how quickly" a dynamical system goes from a regime of stasis, to switching between two states, to switching between four states (and so on through powers of two, until chaos is reached), as a control parameter is adjusted. How could that be relevant to the probability that an electron emits a photon?
Angel Garces Doz (who has already appeared many times in this blog) in effect proposes to identify the doubling cascade with the cloud of virtual particles - iterated creation of virtual pairs. He points out that the size of the bulbs budding from the Mandelbrot set also diminishes according to Feigenbaum's constant, and says, let's think of spherical wavefunctions in the virtual cloud in this way. It's a brilliantly vivid intuition.
Meanwhile, I found that Mario Hieb's discovery had already appeared (in a different form) in papers by Vladimir Manasson (2006, 2008). His idea is that there is a prototypical self-organizing system (e.g. think of a soliton), that has 1-state, 2-state, 4-state... forms according to the value of some parameter, as in the doubling cascade. His idea is that the different elementary particles correspond to the different states, and that the levels of the cascade correspond to the fundamental forces. The Feigenbaum ratio, describing how the control parameter changes from one level to the next, maps to the relative strength of the forces!
Finally, I take inspiration from Sergei Gukov, for whom the doubling cascade describes the proliferation of fixed points in a renormalization group flow, as some property of a QFT varies. I am also intrigued by the criticality of the Higgs boson mass in this regard.
I am wondering whether - for example - you could have dissipative "hypermagnetization" (hypercharge magnetization) of the QCD vacuum in the early universe, passing through a doubling cascade of dynamical regimes, and ending in a top quark condensate that breaks electroweak symmetry, leaving only the familiar electromagnetic interaction, with Feigenbaum's constant somehow imprinted on the size of the electromagnetic coupling.
Perhaps the clearest way to classify the available theoretical approaches is how they interpret the doubling cascade. Feigenbaum's constant has the rather abstract meaning, of describing "how quickly" a dynamical system goes from a regime of stasis, to switching between two states, to switching between four states (and so on through powers of two, until chaos is reached), as a control parameter is adjusted. How could that be relevant to the probability that an electron emits a photon?
Angel Garces Doz (who has already appeared many times in this blog) in effect proposes to identify the doubling cascade with the cloud of virtual particles - iterated creation of virtual pairs. He points out that the size of the bulbs budding from the Mandelbrot set also diminishes according to Feigenbaum's constant, and says, let's think of spherical wavefunctions in the virtual cloud in this way. It's a brilliantly vivid intuition.
Meanwhile, I found that Mario Hieb's discovery had already appeared (in a different form) in papers by Vladimir Manasson (2006, 2008). His idea is that there is a prototypical self-organizing system (e.g. think of a soliton), that has 1-state, 2-state, 4-state... forms according to the value of some parameter, as in the doubling cascade. His idea is that the different elementary particles correspond to the different states, and that the levels of the cascade correspond to the fundamental forces. The Feigenbaum ratio, describing how the control parameter changes from one level to the next, maps to the relative strength of the forces!
Finally, I take inspiration from Sergei Gukov, for whom the doubling cascade describes the proliferation of fixed points in a renormalization group flow, as some property of a QFT varies. I am also intrigued by the criticality of the Higgs boson mass in this regard.
I am wondering whether - for example - you could have dissipative "hypermagnetization" (hypercharge magnetization) of the QCD vacuum in the early universe, passing through a doubling cascade of dynamical regimes, and ending in a top quark condensate that breaks electroweak symmetry, leaving only the familiar electromagnetic interaction, with Feigenbaum's constant somehow imprinted on the size of the electromagnetic coupling.
Friday, April 28, 2017
Feigenbaum meets Feynman
In quantum field theories, virtual particles cause quantities like the couplings to "run" with energy scale. Amateur physics numerologists find formulas for the low-energy values, but the professionals expect that these quantities will take their simplest form in some high-energy unified theory, so professional physics numerology involves the high-energy values.
The low-energy values - which are the quantities that are measured and listed in the physics databooks - are therefore regarded as being equal to "simple high-energy value + messy correction full of logarithms etc". However, there is the phenomenon of the "infrared fixed point". This occurs when the dynamics of the running (as described by a beta function) converges on the same low-energy value, for a range of starting values at high energy. In the language of dynamical systems theory, this means that the beta function enters an attractor at low energy.
This strikes me as one of the few ways in which amateur physics numerology might be realized within an actual quantum field theory: an attractor might dictate simple relations between the low-energy values. I have no examples of low-energy numerology being realized in this way, but it's a possibility.
It is therefore exceptionally intriguing to see some low-energy numerology which utilizes a famous constant from dynamical systems theory, Feigenbaum's constant. Mario Hieb has noticed that
(2 pi) times the fine-structure constant ~= 1 / (Feigenbaum's constant squared)
to 1 part in 1000.
It's a very attractive formula. It's simple, "2 pi" is a very "physical" factor, and the fine-structure constant is the epitome of what we would like to explain. Still, I wonder how mathematically difficult it is to obtain this within a QFT.
Feigenbaum's constant describes the approach to chaos - the rate at which a point attractor bifurcates, as a control parameter varies. It does show up in the theory of phase transitions, which sounds like QFT, but so far I only see it appearing in an indirect way, as part of a formula for some Lyapunov exponents.
It's unclear how one would go from that, to the constant appearing with such simplicity, in a formula for a coupling. Also, I have not found any work on infrared fixed points in which a weak U(1) coupling is part of the attractor.
But I admit that my survey of the possibilities so far is preliminary and superficial. So, maybe it has a chance of being true.
The low-energy values - which are the quantities that are measured and listed in the physics databooks - are therefore regarded as being equal to "simple high-energy value + messy correction full of logarithms etc". However, there is the phenomenon of the "infrared fixed point". This occurs when the dynamics of the running (as described by a beta function) converges on the same low-energy value, for a range of starting values at high energy. In the language of dynamical systems theory, this means that the beta function enters an attractor at low energy.
This strikes me as one of the few ways in which amateur physics numerology might be realized within an actual quantum field theory: an attractor might dictate simple relations between the low-energy values. I have no examples of low-energy numerology being realized in this way, but it's a possibility.
It is therefore exceptionally intriguing to see some low-energy numerology which utilizes a famous constant from dynamical systems theory, Feigenbaum's constant. Mario Hieb has noticed that
(2 pi) times the fine-structure constant ~= 1 / (Feigenbaum's constant squared)
to 1 part in 1000.
It's a very attractive formula. It's simple, "2 pi" is a very "physical" factor, and the fine-structure constant is the epitome of what we would like to explain. Still, I wonder how mathematically difficult it is to obtain this within a QFT.
Feigenbaum's constant describes the approach to chaos - the rate at which a point attractor bifurcates, as a control parameter varies. It does show up in the theory of phase transitions, which sounds like QFT, but so far I only see it appearing in an indirect way, as part of a formula for some Lyapunov exponents.
It's unclear how one would go from that, to the constant appearing with such simplicity, in a formula for a coupling. Also, I have not found any work on infrared fixed points in which a weak U(1) coupling is part of the attractor.
But I admit that my survey of the possibilities so far is preliminary and superficial. So, maybe it has a chance of being true.
Monday, April 10, 2017
vixra watch: April fools
arxiv sees a few joke papers on April 1st every year. vixra was created as a repository for papers blocked from arxiv. We may now have the first parody paper posted to vixra because it wouldn't survive on arxiv. It's a proposal for an "Un-collider", that not only mocks numerous aspects of contemporary physics culture, but also today's political and geopolitical situation. The authors are "Snowden" and "Ellsberg" (the latter promoted it at "Not Even Wrong"), and it has all the professionalism of a proper arxiv parody paper.
There was another parody uploaded at the same time, on "gauge theology", but it's merely clever, and doesn't have the sting of the Un-collider.
Finally (for now), yet another paper has appeared, promising "a Hodge-theoretic analysis of reinforcement learning". I thought that one might be real - making such a connection is not beyond the reach of vixra authors, or of arxiv authors, or even of reality. But the paper merely reproduces the abstract, which says "we begin with a diagram" illustrating the connections. That there is no diagram, is perhaps a way of saying that there is no connection. Then talk of inducing entropy in an economy makes it sound fake, and the final straw is that it's classified as "Relativity and Cosmology". So, another joke paper; perhaps someone testing the vixra submission procedure.
There was another parody uploaded at the same time, on "gauge theology", but it's merely clever, and doesn't have the sting of the Un-collider.
Finally (for now), yet another paper has appeared, promising "a Hodge-theoretic analysis of reinforcement learning". I thought that one might be real - making such a connection is not beyond the reach of vixra authors, or of arxiv authors, or even of reality. But the paper merely reproduces the abstract, which says "we begin with a diagram" illustrating the connections. That there is no diagram, is perhaps a way of saying that there is no connection. Then talk of inducing entropy in an economy makes it sound fake, and the final straw is that it's classified as "Relativity and Cosmology". So, another joke paper; perhaps someone testing the vixra submission procedure.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Two problems
There was unexpected progress, posted at Physics Stack Exchange, on two problems that were low on my list.
First, numerology of the charge radius. See my 2017 update: I ran across a model of the nucleon in which the radius is 4 natural units, divided by the mass. That doesn't explain why the radius comes out a little different for muonic hydrogen compared to electronic hydrogen; but it can explain why dandb's ratio is approximately 4 in both cases.
Second, mystery of the Z0 decay width - that it lies on the same curve as a number of mesons. It's one of @arivero's minor observations, and not one that I spent any time on. I was just going through the motions of investigating it, when to my surprise, something turned up.
First, numerology of the charge radius. See my 2017 update: I ran across a model of the nucleon in which the radius is 4 natural units, divided by the mass. That doesn't explain why the radius comes out a little different for muonic hydrogen compared to electronic hydrogen; but it can explain why dandb's ratio is approximately 4 in both cases.
Second, mystery of the Z0 decay width - that it lies on the same curve as a number of mesons. It's one of @arivero's minor observations, and not one that I spent any time on. I was just going through the motions of investigating it, when to my surprise, something turned up.
Friday, February 10, 2017
tHWZ - latest formulation
During a discussion at PF, I found the following interesting way to think of these quantities:
mH ~ √2 mZ
mt ~ 2 mZ
Hvev ~ 2 √2 mZ
mW ~ √7 / 3 mZ
The last one may look a little odd, but it allows us to approximate sin2 of the Weinberg angle as 2/9.
The impetus was a comment by @arivero in which he pointed out that a tHWZ mass estimate due to Hans de Vries implies
(mW2 - mH2) / (mZ2 - mt2) = 3/8
Now in many GUTs, at the GUT scale, we have that
mW2 / mZ2 = 3/8
So it's as if (mW2 - mH2) / (mZ2 - mt2) is almost invariant under renormalization group flow, with mH = mt = 0 at the GUT scale.
We could even speculate that my set of four approximations above is an infrared fixed point. (The approximations are not exact, but one could think of these as valid at tree level.)
Unfortunately I don't see how any of this makes sense in terms of Hans de Vries's original physical hypothesis.
Anyway, I find that the LC&P formula also works neatly using the four approximations. And I would remark again that mZ is very close to the standard model's μ parameter.
mH ~ √2 mZ
mt ~ 2 mZ
Hvev ~ 2 √2 mZ
mW ~ √7 / 3 mZ
The last one may look a little odd, but it allows us to approximate sin2 of the Weinberg angle as 2/9.
The impetus was a comment by @arivero in which he pointed out that a tHWZ mass estimate due to Hans de Vries implies
(mW2 - mH2) / (mZ2 - mt2) = 3/8
Now in many GUTs, at the GUT scale, we have that
mW2 / mZ2 = 3/8
So it's as if (mW2 - mH2) / (mZ2 - mt2) is almost invariant under renormalization group flow, with mH = mt = 0 at the GUT scale.
We could even speculate that my set of four approximations above is an infrared fixed point. (The approximations are not exact, but one could think of these as valid at tree level.)
Unfortunately I don't see how any of this makes sense in terms of Hans de Vries's original physical hypothesis.
Anyway, I find that the LC&P formula also works neatly using the four approximations. And I would remark again that mZ is very close to the standard model's μ parameter.
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