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Precursor Field Connection to Quantum Field Theory

November 8, 2016

I’ve done some pretty intense thinking about the precursor field that enables quantized particles to exist (see prior post for a summary of this thought process) via unitary field twists that tend to a background state direction. This field would have to have two types of connections that act like forces in conventional physics: a restoring force to the background direction, and a connecting force to neighborhood field elements. The first force is pretty simple to describe mathematically, although some questions remain about metastability and other issues that I’ll mention in a later post. The second force is the important one. My previous post described several properties for this connection, such as the requirement that the field connection can only affect immediate neighborhood field elements.

The subject that really got me thinking was specifically how one field element influences others. As I mentioned, the effect can’t pass through neighboring elements. It can’t be a physical connection, what I mean by that is you can’t model the connection with some sort of rubber band, otherwise twists could not be possible since twists require a field discontinuity along the twist axis. That means the connection has to act via a form of momentum transfer. An important basis for a field twist has to consist of an element rotation, since no magnitudes exist for field elements (this comes from E=hv quantization, see previous few posts). But just how would this rotation, or change in rotation speed, affect neighboring elements? Would it affect a region or neighborhood, or only one other element? And by how much–would the propagation axis get more of the rotation energy, if so, how much energy do other non-axial regions get, and if there are multiple twists, what is the combined effect? How do you ensure that twist energy is conserved? You can see that trying to describe the second force precisely opens up a huge can of worms

To conserve twist energy so the twist doesn’t dissipate or somehow get amplified in R3, I thought the only obvious possibility is that an element rotation or change of rotation speed would only affect one field element in the direction of propagation. But I realized that if this field is going to underlie the particle/field interactions described by quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, the energy of the twist has to spread to many adjacent field elements in order to describe, for example, quantum interference. I really struggled after realizing that–how is twist conservation going to be enforced if there is a distributed element rotation impact.

Then I had what might be called (chutzpah trigger warning coming 🙂 a breakthrough. I don’t have to figure that out. It’s already described in quantum theory by path integrals–the summation of all possible paths, most of which will cancel out. Quantum Field theory describes how particles interact with an EM field, for example, via the summation of all possible virtual and real particle paths via exchange bosons, for instance, photons. Since quantum field theory describes every interaction as a sum of all possible exchange bosons, and does it while conserving various interaction properties, all this stuff I’m working on could perhaps be simply described as replacing both real and virtual particles of quantum theory with field twists, partial or complete, that tend to rotate to the I dimension direction in R3 + I space (the same space described with the quantum oscillator model) of my twist theory hypothesis.

I now have to continue to process and think about this revelation–can all this thinking I’ve been doing be reduced to nothing more than a different way to think about the particles of quantum field theory? Do I add any value to quantum field theory by looking at it this way? Is there even remotely a possibility of coming up with an experiment to verify this idea?

Agemoz

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Basis Field–NYAEMFT (Not Yet Another EM Field Theory)

July 19, 2016

If you’ve been following along in my effort to work out details of the Unitary Twist field, you will have seen the evolution of the concept from an original EM field theory to something that might be described as a precursor field that enables quantized sub-atomic particles, Maxwell’s field equations, relativity, and other things to emerge .  I’ve worked out quite a few contraints and corollaries describing this field–but I need to make it really clear what this field is not.  It cannot be an EM field.

My sidebar on this site calls it an EM field but now is the time to change that, because to achieve the goal of enabling the various properties/particles I list above, this field has to be clearly specified as different from an EM field.  Throughout physics history there have been efforts to extend the EM field description to enable quantization, General Relativity, and the formation of the particle zoo.  For a long time I had thought to attempt to modify the Maxwell’s field equations to achieve these, but the more I worked on the details, the more I realized I was going at it the wrong way.

The precursor field (which I still call the unitary twist field)  does allow EM field relations to emerge, but it is definitely not an EM field.  EM fields cannot sustain a quantized particle, among other things.  While the required precursor field has many similarities to an EM field that tempt investigators to find a connection, over time many smart people have attempted to modify it without success.

I now know that I must start with what I know the precursor field has to be, and at some point then show how Maxwell’s field equations can arise from that.

First, it can readily be shown that quantization in the form of E=hv forces the precursor field to have no magnitude component.  Removing the magnitude component allows a field structure to be solely dependent on frequency to obtain the structure’s energy.   This right here is why EM fields already are a poor candidate to start from.   It took some thinking but eventually I realized that the precursor field could be achieved with a composition of a sea of orientable infintesimal “balls” in a plane (actually a 3D volume, but visualizing as a 2D plane may be helpful).

The field has to have 3 spatial dimensions and 1 imaginary dimension that doesn’t point in a spatial direction (not counting time).  You’ll recognize this space as already established in quantum particle mechanics–propagators have an intrinsic e^i theta (wt – kx) for computing the complex evolution of composite states in this 3D space with an imaginary component, so I’m not inventing anything new here.  Or look at the photon as it oscillates between the real and imaginary (magnetic) field values.

Quantization can readily be mapped to a vector field that permits only an integer number of field rotations, easy to assign to this precursor field–give the field a preferred (lower energy) orientation in the imaginary direction called a default or background state.  Now individual twists must do complete cycles–they must must turn all the way around to the default orientation and no more.  Partial twists can occur but must fall back to the default orientation , thus allowing integration of quantum evolution over time to ultimately cause these pseudo-particles to vanish and contribute no net energy to the system.  This shows up in the computation of virtual particles in quantum field theory and the emergence of the background zero-point energy field.

Because of this quantized twist requirement, it is now possible to form stable particles, which unlike linear photons, are closed loop twists–rings and knots and interlocked rings.  This confines the momentum of the twist into a finite area and is what gives the particle inertia and mass.  What the connection is to the Higg’s field, I candidly admit I don’t know.  I’m just taking the path of what I see the precursor field must be, and certainly have not begun to work out derivations to all parts of the Standard Model.

The particle zoo then results from the tree of possible stable or semi-stable twist topologies.   Straight line twists are postulated to be photons, rings are electrons/positrons differentiated by the axial and radial spins, quark combinations are interlocked rings where I speculate that the strong force results from attempting to pull out an interlocked ring from another.  In that case, the quarks can pull apart easily until the rings start to try to cross, then substantial repulsion marks the emergence of the asymptotic strong force.

Quantum entanglement, speed of light, and interference behavior results from the particle’s group wave characteristics–wave phase is constant and instantly set across all distance, but particles are group wave constructions that can only move by changing relative phase of a Fourier composition of waves.  This geometry easily demonstrates behavior such as the two-slit experiment or Aharonov’s electron.  The rate of change of phase is limited, causing the speed of light limit to emerge.  What limits this rate of change?  I don’t know at this point.

All this has been extensively documented in the 168 previous posts on this blog.  As some point soon I plan to put this all in a better organized book to make it easier to see what I am proposing.

However, I felt the need to post here, the precursor field I call the Unitary Twist Field is *not* an EM field, and really isn’t a modified or quantized EM field.  All those efforts to make the EM field create particles, starting with de Broglie (waves around a ring), Compton, Bohm, pilot wave, etc etc just simply don’t work.  I’ve realized over the years that you can’t start with an EM field and try to quantize it.  The precursor field I’m taking the liberty of calling the Unitary Twist Field has to be the starting point if there is one.

Agemoz

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Continuous Fields Cannot be Linear

June 10, 2012

A shocking revelation for me, in all my years both as a professional electrical engineer and as an amateur physicist.  I realize I have zero credibility out there with anyone, but at least for myself, I have discovered something fundamental about fields that I did not know.  Perhaps if I were a mathematician I would have worked this out.  Nevertheless, it is quite provable in my mind, and has enormous impact on how I must model the two particle interaction, whether by QFT or unitary twist field theory.

The concept of linear central force fields means that multiple potential sources create the field by means of linear superposition.  If you have two sources of potential, the effect on the field at any point is the sum of the effect due to either one.  There are potential corner cases such as if the potential is infinite at the point source, but in every finite potential situation, the field is the sum of all sources at that point.  Electrostatic fields are supposedly both continuous and linear, but this cannot be at the quantum scale.

I have been discussing in previous posts the concept of a median plane between two charged sources, and particularly enlightening was the attraction case of a positive and negatively charged particle.  Between these two particles will be a median plane whose normal runs through both particles.  This median plane can have no absolute potential (relative to the electrostatic field potential at infinite distance).  This field cannot pass any information, even about the existence of, one charged particle through this median plane.  In fact, it is well known in electrostatics that if you put a metal plane between two particles and ground it, you will get the same charge field distribution as if the second particle wasn’t there–it cannot be determined if the second particle actually exists or not.

The only way a field can pass information across this median plane is if the field is not continuous.  If the field  is created by a spaced array of quantized particles, such that they never, or almost never, interact, then the effect of the field can be made linear.  Indeed, shooting real photons at each other could collide, but that is exceeding rare, and modeling the field by photons, virtual or real, in either QFT or unitary twist field theory,  would produce a linear superposition of fields.  But there is no question now in my mind that if I simulate this, I cannot assume a continuous electrostatic field, such a thing cannot exist.  This field has to be almost entirely empty, with only very sporadic quantized particles, then I can see how linearity would be possible.  Every quantized particle that interacts with a quantized particle from the other source will distort the appearance of linearity, so the fact that deviations from linearity are experimentally unmeasurable strongly points to a extremely sparse field component density.

I had thought that QFT virtual particles could construct a continuous field in a Taylor or Fourier series type of composition, but it is clear that it cannot.  The QFT virtual particles must be exceedingly sparse, just like the twists in unitary twist field theory.  It also suggests that QFT virtual particles would have to clump in some way in order for localized neighborhoods in the field to obey conservation.

Now I see a workable model for twists.  The median plane problem cannot exist if the field is not continous.

Agemoz

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Symmetry Constraint on Charged Particle Geometry

June 5, 2012

In working out the details of how the complex unitary twist field would work on a system of two charged particles, I came across a very important discovery.  This holds true even if you don’t believe in the unitary twist field theory tooth fairy, even if you only think in terms of QFT virtual particles.

If you have two identical charged particles such as electrons separated by a distance r, symmetry geometry requires that the interaction cannot be static.  Any continuous static field in this system must have a plane perpendicular to the path between the particles that is the same as if there were no particles–that is, identical to the background field.  For standard QFT, this plane cannot have an electrostatic potential relative to the field out at infinity.  For the Complex Unitary Twist Field theory, this plane must be at the background field state in the imaginary dimension.

 

But if this is true, then that becomes a point where the behavior of one particle cannot affect the other–there is no field potential.  I won’t go into the QFT case, but the analogy is similar when I try to work a geometric solution in the twist field case.  I had found a way that the bend of the twist field imaginary background vector would specify the effect of charge on the second particle.  But this bend has to be symmetric in this system, with a plane in the middle where the bend is the same as the overall background field with no charges.  Oops–the problem shows up where there is no way to communicate the bend effect to the second particle without creating a paradox–an impossible field situation.

 

Any static field between two identical charged particles must have a plane between them that cannot pass the charge effect. The charge effect must pass dynamically across this plane

I said, uh-oh–the unitary twist field can’t work this way with bends.  Then I realized this has to be true for QFT too!  The symmetry of the system says that there is no way that the charged particle force can be conveyed within a static field.  There has to be something dynamic passing through the plane–virtual photons for QFT, and probably some type of background vector motion for the unitary twist field.  These two theories have to converge, and symmetry is going to severely constrain what has to be happening across the plane.  Even if you ignore unitary twist field theory, and just make the statement that QFT claims that virtual photons are not real (and unitary twist field theory specifies virtual photons as partial field twists that don’t complete but revert back to the background vector state), this symmetry problem forces the virtual photons to have both a physical field property and a property of motion.

Agemoz

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Fine Structure Constant Hunting

May 1, 2012

Built into current QED (quantum electrodynamics) is the QFT process of pertubative accumulation of virtual photons.  Each possible virtual photon term is assigned a unitless  probability (actually,  probability amplitude capable of interfering with other terms)  of occurrence called the fine structure constant.   Searching for the reason for the value of this constant is a legendary pursuit for physicists, Feynman made the famous comment about it:

It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man.

All kinds of research, study, and guesses have gone into trying to figure out why this number is what it is, and I can guarantee you this is a fruitless pursuit.  Think about it, there have been maybe millions of physicists over the last 100 years, the vast majority with IQs well north of 150, all putting varying amounts of effort into trying to figure out where this number comes from.  If none of them have come up with the answer yet, which they haven’t, the odds of you or I stumbling across it is certifiably close to zero.  That is an effort that I consider a waste of time. For one thing, this is a no-numerology physics blog.

One bad trait of many amateur physicists is to theorize answers by mixing up various constants such as pi, e, square roots, etc, etc and miraculously come up with numbers that explain everything.  Note, no knowledge required of the underlying science–just mix up numbers until something miraculous happens, you get a match to an actual observed physical constant (well, so close, anyway, and future work will explain the discrepancy.  Yeah… riiiight).  Then you go out and proselytize your Nobel prize winning theory, to the annoyance of everyone that sees what you did.  This is also called Easter egg hunting, and really is a waste of time.  Don’t do that.  Hopefully you will never ever see me do that.

Nevertheless, physicists are desperate for reasons why the fine structure constant is what it is, and all kinds of thought, analysis, and yes, numerology, have already gone into trying to find where it comes from.  Why do I insert a post about it in the midst of my step by step procedure of working out the role of unitary twist field theory in the electron-photon interaction?  Because, as I mentioned, the fine structure constant is fundamental to mathematically iterating terms in the QFT solution to this particular QED problem.  It stands to reason that an underlying theory would have a lot to say about why the fine structure constant is what it is.

Unfortunately, it’s clear to me that it’s not going to be that simple.  Pertubative QFT is exactly analogous to the term factors in a Taylor series.  You can create amazing functions from a polynomial with the right coefficients–I remember when I was much younger being totally amazed that you could create trigonometric functions from a simple sum of factors.  Just looking at the coefficients really tells you very little about what function is going to result, and that is exactly true in pertubative QFT.  The fine structure constant is your coefficient multiplier, but what we don’t have is the actual analytic function.  The fine structure constant has a large number of ways to appear in interaction computation, but the direct connection to real physics is really somewhat abstract.  For example, suppose I could geometrically explain the ratio of the charge potential energy between two electrons separated by distance d with the energy of a photon who’s energy is defined by that same distance d, which is defined as the fine structure constant value.  But I can’t.  The fact that it takes 137 of these photons (or equivalantly a photon with 1/137 the distance) to hold together two electrons to the same distance is not physically or geometrically interesting, it is a numerology thing.  Pursuing geometric reasons for the 137 is a lost cause, because the fine structure constant is a coefficient multiplier, an artifact of pertubative construction.

Nevertheless, I do see a way that the fine structure constant might be derived from the unitary twist field theory.  Don’t hold your breath–obviously a low IQ type like me isn’t likely to come up with any real discovery here.  Even so, I should follow through.  Here’s the deal.  Take that picture in the previous post, the second “Figure 2” that shows the effect of bending the imaginary vector.  I need to go back and edit that diagram, the circle ring is the twist ring electron, and fix that to be fig 3.  Anyway, the force on that electron ring is going to be determined by one of two things–the amount of the bend or the difference delta of the bend on one side of the ring versus the other.  The bend will gradually straighten out the further you get from a remote charge.   This computation will give the motion and hence the inertia of any self-contained twist (only the linear twist, the photon, will experience no net force from an imaginary bend).  This will be a difficult computation to do directly–but remember we must have gauge invariance, which leads to my discovery that a ring with an imaginary bend must have a frame of reference with no bend.  Find this frame of reference, and you’ve found the motion of the electron ring in the first frame of reference–a much easier computation to do.  This is real analysis and logical thinking, I think–not Easter egg hunting.

Agemoz

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It must be my Imaginary Imagination

April 28, 2012

This modification to the unitary twist theory has everything going for it.  Here’s what happened: the twist theory needs a background state for quantization to work–enforcing integer twists means that all twist rotations except for one (the background state) to be unstable.   I originally put this background state  in R3 along with the rest of the twist rotation, but this ran into problems trying to work out charge forces–the requirement for gauge invariance becomes a show stopper.

So, using the fact that EM fields and photons are mathematically described as a complex wave function in C3, I proposed that the background state direction be an imaginary axis.  The twist would reside in a plane defined by one real vector and the single background vector pointing in a direction orthogonal to R3.  Now the photon wave equation immediately falls out, but we still get the quantization and special relativity Lorentz transforms unique to the unitary twist field approach.  The problem with discontinuities vanish now, because the twist never appears in R3, only between R3 and I1–the real and imaginary parts.

Assigning the unitary twist field theory background state to an imaginary direction (note vector arrows are direction only, don't try to assign a physical distance to these arrows!)

What happens to the charge attraction problem?  Can we still do virtual photons, which in this variation of  the theory become partial twists (bends) from the imaginary background state to some basis vector in R3?  I am working out a generalized solution but at first glance the answer is yes.  Two particles near each other will increase the apparent bend of the background state, opposite each other cancel the bend, and 90 degrees apart generate a Sqrt[2] compounding effect, bending to between the two particles–exactly what I would expect.

So, finally, back to the original question.  Can this modification finally make a workable solution to the attraction conservation of momentum problem?  Having the background state be orthogonal to all of R3 makes this a much better problem.  Now there’s no symmetry problem regardless of electron ring orientation.  Unlike before, where the background state was in R3, now the twist moment vector is always in the plane of the ring, which means that regardless of the orientation of the ring, one side of the ring will always experience slightly less background bend than the other.  This delta bend causes a distortion in the ring path travel, making it do a motion to compensate for the shorter return path to the background state versus the other side–causing motion of the overall ring (see figure 1.)  Now there is no momentum problem due to photon energy emission for attraction–the difference in bend from one side to the other simply causes the particle to move.  Now it is easy to see how the field carries the energy.   And most importantly, the solution is symmetric, there is no R3 direction preference, so gauge invariance should hold.

Effect of a remote charge on a local particle ring. Note that regardless of ring orientation in R3 or direction of I0 bend, this drawing will be valid, uplholding rotation and spatial invariance (Lorentz invariance not shown here).

It looks to me that there is no question about it, this has to be the right way to go.

More to come…

Agemoz

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The Quandary of Attraction, Part III

April 26, 2012

I worked quite a bit with figuring out a way to make twists work in the electron-photon case.  I had excluded partial twist bending as a means of propagating the charge field of a remote charged particle, but this really troubles me, because it is a very clean way of representing virtual photons.  Virtual photons actually come from QFT as partial terms of a total expression of interaction probabilities.  They are a mathematical artifact only in the sense that there are constraints on the sum of all virtual interaction probabilities.  Even though they aren’t really “real”, they derive from real field behavior in aggregate, so there must be some physical analog if I’m going to construct an underlying theory.  Partial twists were perfect–since they have to return to the background direction without executing a full twist (otherwise there would be a real photon there), and since they have a linearity property where multiple charge sources can create a sum of bends, there was a good match for the QFT virtual particle artifice.  Such a bend will have an effect on a remote ring (charged particle) caused by the delta bend from one side of the particle to the other.  Here’s a simple picture that illustrates what I am thinking:

Problem with bend solution to Unitary Twist Field theory in a charged particle array

If bends are correct, there’s a whole bunch of problems that show up, the Figure 2 shows one of them–it doesn’t work correctly if a third charged particle is added at an angle to the line of the first and second particles.  In addition, the bends aren’t even correct if the field due to the receiving particle is added in.  It just doesn’t work, and so I decided to throw in the towel and say that bends are not virtual particles and there is no option but to only consider full twists for real photons.  The twist model won’t have a QFT equivalant mapping with virtual photons.  Oh, I really don’t like that.  I also really don’t like the background vector in R3 in order to enforce quantization–I see a large number of problems creating such a system that is gauge invariant (what I mean by that is that the system’s behavior is independent of absolute position, rotation, and Lorentz invariant to frames of reference in space-time).

It occurred to me that all these problems could be solved if we put the background vector direction orthogonal to our R3 space.  Not really a 4th dimension because nothing will exist there, but a 4th dimension direction to point.  I think multi-particle bends will correctly sum to create an electrostatic or magnetic field that QFT would generate with virtual photons, and now there is no preferred angle in R3 that would ruin gauge invariance.

I have to think about this a lot more because now there may be too many degrees of freedom for twists.  The work on circular polarization for photons wont be affected since the background direction just provides a reference for the available twists.  But the ring solution might end up with too many possibilities, I have to figure that out.  But I see a lot of promise in this adjustment to Unitary Twist Field theory–I think it is a closer match to what we know QFT and EM fields will do, yet still preserves the quantization and special relativity behavior that makes the Unitary Twist Field idea so compelling to me.

Agemoz

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The Quandary of Attraction

April 20, 2012

Hah!  You read that title and thought you were getting a socially interesting topic rather than the boring amateur physics I usually post about!  But I’m not all mean, let me help you out:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_%28series%29

OK, now that all those guys are gone, let’s talk physics.  Hello?  Anyone left?  Guess not.  Well, then I can make outrageous crackpot claims and no one will care.

Last week, Prof Jones started in on reviewing the Unitary Twist Field idea.  He’ll be back, but today I want to address a crucial question about unitary twist fields.  The basic premise is built on a geometrical model of quantization using E=hv.  I see three principles that create an underlying geometry for EM fields that gives us both quantization and special relativity (see many previous posts).  These three principles are:

1: The E=hv quantization for fields and particles  is enforced by a rotation in a vector field, that is, a twist.

2: To ensure that only single complete rotations can occur, the field must have a local background state that the rotation returns to.

3: To ensure that the energy of the rotation cannot dissipate, the vector field must be unitary.  Every field element must have constant magnitude but can rotate in 3D+T spacetime.

I have figured out that the special relativity relations hold in such a geometry–there will always be a maximum possible observable speed c, and the Lorentz equations for space and time will also hold.  The correct number of degrees of freedom for photons (linear twists) and electron/positrons (ring twists) exist.  I’ve found that the uncertainty relation will hold for particles in this system.  I’ve found a bunch of other things that appear to match reality as well.  Yes, I am guilty of massaging this theory to get the facts to fit, but I’m doing the best to do it without glossing over any obvious fallacies–and when I encounter one, I adjust the theory.  I keep waiting for one to really kill off the theory, but so far that hasn’t happened.  However here is one that could kill it:

How does the theory explain attraction and repulsion of charged particles?

Real QFT theory, unlike my la-la land unitary twist field theory, says that this is mediated by exchanges of photons.  On the surface, this has a momentum problem because there is no way a particle can emit something with momentum in such a way that a second distant particle *approaches* the emitting particle.  That violates conservation of momentum and hence conservation of energy.  The mathematically derived QFT solution uses virtual photons to have the field around the second particle change in such a way that the particle moves toward the first–but this seems disengenuous to me–contrived, just as much or worse as my theory.  Nevertheless, the math works and that is enough for real physicists.

However, I am positing a new theory, somewhat outrageous in its claims, and thus demanding outrageously thorough verification.  Unitary Twist Field theory must have a (hopefully better) explanation how attraction and repulsion would work.  This issue is part of the more general issue of electron-photon interactions, and there are a whole huge array of sub-issues that come with this one simple interaction.  For example, photons of all frequencies (energies) and polarizations can interact with an electron, so any geometrical solution must not assume any preferred orientation of the electron moment or photon polarization or external electrostatic or magnetic field (ie, nearby sets of photons).   If the electron is one of many in a region, and a low energy photon that is far “larger” than the array hits the array, how is it that exactly one and only one electron absorbs the photon?  I could go on and on, but let’s zero in on this attraction issue.  How do I claim that would work in unitary twist field theory?

Actually, let’s ask the attraction question in a slightly different way so you can see clearly what the dilemma is for real-world physics theory.  QFT says that attraction/repulsion of charged particles is mediated by exchanges of photons.  Arrays of photons form an EM field that causes charged particles to change their path of motion in space-time.  This means that in a given frame of reference, a photon must be an element of either a magnetic field or an electrostatic field.  Here’s the question:

What’s different about the photon generating an electrostatic field and a magnetic field?

Real-world theory says that photons are oscillating electrostatic and magnetic fields–a rather unsatisfactory way to describe a photon because it is self-referential.  Electrostatic and magnetic fields are themselves composed of photons.   Nevertheless, the math works, so let’s ignore that for now.  However, referring to the question about what is different, photons have only one degree of freedom, polarization.  There is no anti-particle for photons, it is its own anti-particle.   Not a lot to work with here!  So–what is a “magnetic” photon, and what is an “electrostatic” photon?  Or is there something magic about how the photons are arranged as a group that explains the field property?  And don’t forget, this is in one particular frame of reference!  Go to a different frame and the field state *changes* from electrostatic to magnetic or vice-versa.

Unitary Field Twist theory has a very novel explanation.  Let’s wait for the next post to see it.

Agemoz

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Unitary Twist Field Dreams

April 12, 2012

I’m going to do something a little different in this post.  It’s every amateur’s dream to be taken seriously by the professionals, so I’m going to have a little fun today and pretend that a physics professor looked at this and decided to be nice (he just got a big grant approved for his research and was feeling unusually magnanimous) and go over it with me.  This is not for real–a real professor would almost certainly not give the time of day to an amateur’s ideas–it just is too much work to dig in and be precise about why any set of ideas wont work, nevermind those from someone who hasn’t spent a lifetime dedicated to this field of study.  But, amateurs all get their Walter Mitty dreams, and this is mine–and this is my blog, so I can do what I durn please here!  Actually I don’t care if I’m recognized for anything I come up with, but it’d be cool if some part of it turned out to be right.  Anyway, here goes.

Prof Jones:  Hello, what do you have for me?

Me:  I have this set of ideas about how particles form from a field.

Prof Jones:  You have a theory [suppresses noisy internal bout of indigestion]

Me:  Well, yes.  I think there is a geometrical basis for quantum and special relativistic behavior of particles.

Prof Jones:  We already have that in QFT.  Are you adding or revising existing knowledge?  I’m really not interested in someone telling me Einstein or anybody else was wrong…

Me:  I believe I am adding.  I have tried to take a overall high-level view of what is now known, especially the E=hv relation and the special relativity Lorentz transforms, and see some conclusions that make sense to me

Prof Jones:  Well, I’ve had a lot of ideas thrown at me, and they are a dime-a-dozen.  It’s not the idea that’s important but the logic or experiment that supports it.  A good theory explains something we don’t understand and allows us to successfully predict new things we otherwise would not find.  Is yours a good theory?  Do you have supporting evidence or experiment?  Can you predict something I don’t already know with QFT?  Does it contradict anything I already know?  If you can’t pass this complete criteria, the theory isn’t going anywhere but the round file.

Me:  I don’t have anything that proves it.  I don’t have anything it predicts right now but I see some possibilities.  I don’t think it contradicts anything, but there are some question marks.

Prof Jones:  Urrg…. Well, this is your lucky day.  I happen to be in the mood for shooting down the bright ideas of poor suckers that think Nobel prizes are given out like puppies from a puppy mill to people that haven’t paid their dues in this very, very tough field.  So, let’s start with this question:  What makes you think you are the one that has come up with something new in quantum theory?  After all, you can’t argue that the set of smart-enough people that actually can legitimately call themselves physicists, theoretical or related, have spent cumulative millions of lifetimes trying to break down the data and clues we have to solve the very well-known problem you are looking at.  Don’t you think someone, or many someones, with a much deeper background than you would have long since considered whatever you have and passed it by fairly quickly?

Me:  [meekly] yes.

Me:  But I have thought about this for a very long time, and refined it, and received feedback, and really tried hard to make sure it makes sense.

Prof Jones:  Unfortunately, so has every honest physics PhD, and I’m afraid they are going to have a lot more mental “hardware” than you, having both genuine talent and also having brutally difficult training in abstract mental comprehension and synthesis ability and current knowledge.

Me: OK.  I guess I could quit doing this–I just find it so interesting.

Prof Jones: [softens just slightly, realizing there’s a lot of snarky but not-classy power in putting down those who try, but are so limited in resources or study time].  Well, just so you understand.  You aren’t going anywhere with this.  But let’s see what you got.  Before I dig in, I want to know what you are adding to existing theory, as succinctly as you can communicate.

Me:  Alright.  I thought about the way quantization works on particles and fields, and in both cases the E=hv relation defines very explicitly what must happen.  I spent a lot of time trying to construct a model of a system that is continuous but obeys this relation at the smallest scale.  I came up with three constraints that describe such a system–in fact, it looks to me that the E=hv relation actually specifies a geometrically defined system.  These constraints are:

1: The quantization is enforced by a rotation in a vector field, that is, a twist.

2: To ensure that only single complete rotations can occur, the field must have a local background state that the rotation returns to.

3: To ensure that the energy of the rotation cannot dissipate, the vector field must be unitary.  Every field element must have constant magnitude but can rotate in 3D+T spacetime.

Prof Jones:  I see what you are getting at.  The E=hv relation only allows discrete energy states for a given frequency within an available continuous energy range.  A twist is a modulus operation that works in a continuous 3D field to provide such discrete states provided that there is a default idle state, which would be your background vector orientation.  However, you realize that EM fields do not have limitations on magnitude, nor is there any evidence of a background state.

Me: I understand that.  I am proposing that because QFT shows how EM fields can be derived from quantum particles (photons), my theory would underlie EM fields.  I see a path where EM fields can be constructed from this Unitary Twist Field Theory from sets of quantized twists.  I agree that the background vector direction is a danger because it implies an asymmetry that could prevent gauge invariance–but I suspect that any detector built of particles that are formed from this twist mechanism cannot detect the background state.  The background state direction doesn’t have to be absolute, it can vary, and a unitary vector field has to point somewhere.  Continuity and energy conservation imply that local neighborhoods would point in the same direction.

Prof Jones:  Sets of quantized twists, hunh.  Well, you’ve got a very big problem with that idea, because you cannot construct a twist in a background unitary vector field without introducing discontinuities.  If you have discontinuities, you don’t have a unitary vector field.

Me: Yes, I agree.  However, if the twist moves at speed c, it turns out the discontinuities lie on the light cones of each point in the twist and are stable, each light cone path has a stable unchanging angle.  In a sense, travelling at the speed of light isolates the twist elements from what would be a discontinuity in a static representation.

Prof Jones:  I don’t think I agree with that, I would have to see proof.  But another question comes to mind.  In fact a million objections come to mind but let me ask you this.  You are constructing an EM field from this unitary vector field.  But just how does this single vector field construct the two degrees of freedom in an EM field, namely electrostatic fields and magnetic fields?  Just how are you proposing to construct charge attraction and repulsion and magnetic field velocity effects specified by Maxwell’s relations?  QFT is built on virtual particles, in the EM case, virtual photons.  How are you going to make that work with your theory?  You realize the magnitude, don’t you, of what you are taking on?

Me:  These are questions I have spent a great deal of time with over the last 20 years.  That doesn’t justify a bad theory, I know.  So I’ll just present what I have, and if this dies, it dies.  I’d just like to know if my thinking has any possible connection to the truth, the way things really are.  I realize that we have a perfectly workable theory in QFT that has done amazingly well.  But we also have a lot of particles and a lot of interactions that seem to me to have an underlying basis that QFT or relativity don’t explain, they just happen to work.  Renormalization works, but why?  These are some issues that tell me we can’t stop with QFT.

Prof Jones:  [sotto voce] The hubris is strong in this one.

Me: What

Prof Jones:  Nothing.  Go on.  What is your theory going to do with charge and magnetic behavior?

TO BE CONTINUED, SAME BAT-TIME, SAME BAT-CHANNEL

Agemoz

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Twist Theory and Electrons

April 6, 2012

OK, applying this unitary twist field idea to photons seems pretty workable.  We get real photons and virtual photons, and get a good model for how quantization and circular polarization could work.

There are some big questions, though–the biggest of all is that this method of quantizing a continuous system requires a background vector state.  Now, this isn’t as bad as it would seem, because a unitary vector field has to have some direction, and continuity would imply that local neighborhoods would point in the same direction, and the model does not assume that the backround direction has to be absolute throughout, it can change.  Nevertheless, it would seem that a background direction might somehow be detectable with some variation of a Michelson-Morley experiment.  That’s going to get some attention on my part later, but for now I want to go in another direction.

Let’s talk electron models in the Twist Theory.  This is where real physicists have a heyday killing off new theories like this because the electron is so well studied and measured, there is so much that a theory would have to line up with before even beginning to come up with something new.  Don’t know what to say except it’s fun to see what comes out of such a study.

Let’s start with degrees of freedom, just like I just did with the photon, that could kill off the theory in a hurry–and for a long time I knew there was a problem, here it is:  electrons come in four permutations, spin up electron, spin-down electron, spin-up positron, and spin-down positron.  All of these have the same exact mass, charge (+ or -), spin moment, g ratio, and so on.  I have long felt that the electron is effectively modeled with a single unitary field twist ring.   Here’s a picture of the idea.

Twist ring model of an electron in a unitary field with a background state.

The ring has one point where the twist direction matches the background twist state.  The twist curves, unlike the photon, due to internal effects of the ring twist.  I have done math that shows there is a single such solution that is stable, but only in certain circumstances.  I will come back to the math of twist ring solutions, but right now, let’s just see if the degrees of freedom required would shoot this down even before getting to the math.  Sort of like checking to make sure an equation has consistency of units, otherwise the equation is just nonsense.  As I mentioned, there are four variations of the electron that have to have a unique twist field representation.  Are there four unique solutions for the twist ring?

Twist ring degrees of freedom with no background state. Note that two solutions are just mirror images of the other two, we only have one degree of freedom.

Of course, we have our four cases, and no more.  Ooops–wait, two of the four are just mirror images of the first two–we really only have two unique twist ring solutions!  It took me a while to realize there are actually four–in a unitary twist field there would only be two, but in a unitary twist field with a background state, necessary for quantization to work, there are actually four.

The background state required for quantization also provides a reference that prevents the two mirror cases from being identical to the first two cases. There are now two degrees of freedom.

The background state from which the twist must begin acts as a reference vector that keeps the mirror image twist rings from being identical by rotation.  To see this more clearly, look at the two degrees of freedom as a function of the planes they reside in:

The reference vector along with the ring center defines a plane (green) where two possible twist cases result in a unique degree of freedom. The blue plane that the ring resides in defines ring travel direction and is another unique degree of freedom.

One degree of freedom is establised by the ring rotation within the plane that includes the ring.  There are two possibilities, clockwise or counterclockwise.  The second degree of freedom is defined with the plane that the background vector lies in, as well as the center of the twist ring.  The background vector is the starting point for a rotation about the ring circumference.  It should be clear that the background vector creates a reference that makes the two mirror cases unique.  You could argue that it doesn’t matter if the mirror image rotation doesn’t have the same background state, but actually it does–it determines which way the ring will turn if it is moving in a magnetic field–the spin-up electron will move differently than the spin-down electron due to the opposite direction of its starting point vector.  I’ll keep thinking about this but so far, this appears to be valid.

Agemoz

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