Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Dharwadker reminder

At her new blog, Marni Sheppeard asks why the Dharwadker-Khachatryan prediction is being ignored. I think it's no mystery. First, the prediction came in a dubious package; second, even considered in isolation, the relation made no theoretical sense, especially from the perspective of RG flow; third, it's easy to rationalize it as a coincidence when there are so many other relationships that can be found.

Consider the relative lack of attention that even the Shaposhnikov-Wetterich prediction of 126 GeV is receiving. Some people are talking about it; Matilde Marcolli lately coauthored a paper about it, and that ought to give it more attention; but even so, it's mostly absent from the public discourse about the Higgs.

Since the S-W prediction is an RG argument, one ought to see whether a "Koide" approach to the D-K prediction, such as Sheppeard employs (page 97), could be embedded in a more general solution to the RG problems that exist for all Koide relations (such as the "Sumino mechanism"). S-W and D-K could coexist.

Alternatively, one could try to produce the D-K formula as a mass sum rule in a theory of composite electroweak bosons. There have been many of those proposals, but the D-K formula has an unfamiliar form.