# Lab Notes for a Scientific Revolution (Physics)

## April 22, 2012

### Back to Blogging, Uploaded a paper I wrote in 1986 about Preonic Grand Unification

It has been almost 3 years since my last Blog post.  Much of my time has been diverted into a condo hotel project in Longboat Key Florida, and the focus I need to do good physics has been impossible to come by.  Then, the other day, Ken Tucker, a frequent participant at sci.physics.foundations, emailed me about some new research showing that electrons have constituent substructure.  That brought me back immediately to the half a year I spent back in 1986 developing a 200-page paper about a preonic substructure for quarks and leptons, which culminated six years of study from 1980 to 1986.  I finished that paper in August 1986, and then took an 18 year hiatus from physics, resuming again in late-2004.

Ken’s email motivated me to dig out this 1986 paper which I manually typed out on an old-fashioned typewriter, scan it into electronic form, and post it here.  Links to the various sections of this paper are below.  This is the first time I have ever posted this.

Keep in mind that I wrote this in 1986.  I tend to study best by writing while I study, and in this case, what I wrote below was my “study document” for Halzen and Martin’s book “Quarks and Leptons” which had just come out in 1984 and was the first book to pull together what we now think of as modern particle physics and the (then, still fairly new) electroweak unification of Weinberg-Salam.

What is in this paper that I still to this day believe is fundamentally important, and has not been given the attention it warrants, is the isospin redundancy between (left-chiral) quarks and leptons.  This to me is an absolute indication that these particles have a substructure, so that a neutrino and an up quark both have contain the same “isospin up” preon, and an electron and a down quark both contain the same “isospin down” preon.  Section 2.11 below is the key section, if you want to cut to the chase with what I was studying some 26 years ago.  I did post about this in February 2008 at https://jayryablon.wordpress.com/2008/02/02/lab-note-4-an-interesting-left-chiral-muliplet-perhaps-indicative-of-preonic-structure-for-fermions/, though that post merely showed a 1988 summary I had assembled based on my work in 1986, at the behest of the late Nimay Mukhopadhyay, who at the time was teaching at RPI and had become a good friend and one of my early sources of encouragement.  This is the first time I am posting all of that early up-to-1986 work, in complete detail.

Lest you think me crazy, note that seventeen years later, G. Volovik, in his 2003 book “The Universe in a Helium Droplet,” took a very similar tack, see Figure 12.2 in this excerpt: Volovik Excerpt on Quark and Lepton Preonic Structure.

The other aspect of this 1986 paper that I still feel very strongly about, is taking the Dirac gamma-5 as a fifth-dimension indicator.  I know I have been critiqued by technical arguments as to why this should not be taken as a sign of a fifth dimension, but this fits seamlessly with Kaluza Klein which geometrizes the entirely of Maxwell’s theory and is still the best formal unification of classical electromagnetism and gravitation ever developed.  For those who maintain skepticism of Kaluza-Klein and ask “show me the fifth dimension,” just look to chirality which is well-established experimentally.  Why do we have to assume that this fifth dimension will directly manifest in the same way as space and time, if its effects are definitively observable in the chiral structure of fermions?  Beyond this, I remain a very strong proponent of the 5-D Space-Time-Matter Consortium, see http://astro.uwaterloo.ca/~wesson/, which regards matter itself as the most direct manifestation of a fifth physical dimension.  Right now, most folks think about 4-D spacetime plus matter.  These folks correctly think about 5-D space-time-matter, no separation.  And Kaluza-Klein, which historically predated Dirac’s gamma-5, is the underpinning of this.

After my hiatus of the past couple of years, I am going to try in the coming months to write some big-picture materials about physics, which will pull together all I have studied so far in my life.  I am thinking of doing a “Physics Time Capsule for 2100” which will try to explore in broad strokes, how I believe physics will be understood at the end of this century, about 88 years from now.

Anyway, here is my entire 1986 paper:

Preonic Grand Unification and Quantum Gravitation: Capsule Outline and Summary

Abstract and Contents

Section 1.1: Introduction

Section 1.2: Outline and Summary

Section 2.1: A Classical Spacetime Introduction to the Dirac Equation, and the Structure of Five-Dimensional Spacetime with a Chiral Dimension

Section 2.2: Particle/Antiparticle and Spin-Up/Spin-Down Degrees of Quantum Mechanical Freedom in Spacetime and Chirality, Gauge Invariance and the Dirac Wavefunction

Section 2.3: Determination and Labeling of the Spinor Eigensolutions to the Five-Dimensional Dirac Equation, and the High and Low Energy Approximations

Section 2.4: The Fifth-Dimensional Origin of Left and Right Handed Chiral Projections and the Continuity equation in Five Dimensions: Hermitian Conjugacy, Adjoint Spinors, and the Finite Operators Parity (P) and Axiality (A)

Section 2.5: Conjugate and Transposition Symmetries of the Dirac Equation in Five Dimensions, the Finite Operators for Conjugation (C) and Time Reversal (T), and Abelian Relationships Among C, P, T and A

Section 2.6: Charge Conjugation, and the Definitions and Feynman Diagrams for “Electron” and “Positron” Spinors

Section 2.7: Simple Unpolarized s,t,u Scattering Channels with a Covariant Propagator, and the Covariant (Real and Virtual) Polarization States of Massive and Massless Vector Bosons

Section 2.8: Prelude to Preons: The Spinor Decomposition of Four Real Spacetime Dimensions ct,x,y,z into Two Complex Spinor Dimensions Using the Covariant Polarization States of Vector Bosons

Section 2.9: Introduction to Isospin Preons in Electroweak Theory: The Preonic Decomposition of Four Real Electroweak Bosons A, W+, W-, Z into Two Complex Preons Denoting “Isospin Up” and “Isospin Down”

Section 2.10: Summarization of Prior Discussion, and on the Fundamental Importance of Preons in Particle Physics

Section 2.11: The Four-Preon Flavor SU(4) Unification of the Electromagnetic, Weak and Colorless Strong Interactions Excluding Quantum Gravitation; and the Colorless Flavor Classification of Left Handed Real Fermion and Boson Chiral Projections, for a Single Fermion Generation

Section 2.12: The Four-Preon Flavor SU(4)xU(1) Unification of Electromagnetic, Weak, Colorless Strong and Quantum Gravitational Interactions; and the Colorless Flavor Classification of Left and Right Handed Real Fermion and Boson Chiral Projections, for a Single Fermion Generation

Section 2.13: The Six-Preon Unification of Flavor SU(4)xU(1) with High Energy Color SU(4)xU(1) and Two Overlapping Degrees of Freedom; the Flavor and Color Classification of Real Fermions and Vector Bosons for a Single Generation; and the Derivation of Electroweak and Strong/Hyperweak Massless and Massive Neutral Current Vector Bosons

Section 2.14: On the Replication of Fermion Generations: Four Generational Grand Unification with Eighteen Preons and Nine Independent Flavor/Color/Generation Degrees of Freedom, and a Preonic Discussion of Mesons and Meson Decay

References and Bibliography

## May 7, 2009

### Inferring Electrodynamic Gauge Theory from General Coordinate Invariance

I am presently working on a paper to show how electrodynamic gauge theory can be directly connected to generally-covariant gravitational theory.  In essence, we show how there is a naturally occurring gauge parameter in gravitational gemometrodynamics which can be directly connected with the gauge parameter used in electrodynamics, while at the same time local gauge transformations acting on fermion wavefunctions may be synonymously described as general coordinate transformations acting on those same fermion wavefunctions.

Inferring Electrodynamic Gauge Theory from General Coordinate Invariance

If you check out sci.physics.foundations and sci.physics.research, you will see the rather busy path which I have taken over the last month to go from baryons and confinement to studying the Heisenberg equation of motion and Ehrenfest’s theorem, to realizing that there was an issue of interest in the way that Fourier kernels behave under general coordinate transformations given that a general coordinate x^u is not itself a generally-covariant four vector.  Each step was a “drilling down” to get at underlying foundational issues, and this paper arrives at the most basic, fundamental underlying level.

Jay

## April 4, 2009

### Starting a new paper on Baryons and Confinement

Today, I began work on a new paper dealing with the Yang-Mills foundations of baryons and QCD confinement.  The first draft is linked below, and I will provide updates as they develop.

Yang-Mills Foundations of Baryons and Confinement Phenomena

I may get diverted a bit by my US tax filing the next few days, and I am quite busy at work right now so this will mostly be a weekend and after-midnight project, but I do hope to get this paper, which I hope will synthesize many individual insights I have had and subjects I have studied over the past several years, into a something of value for others.

Thanks to the Princess and Peter and Ken and Igor and Ben for feedback and insights posted on the various newsgroups.

Jay.

## December 26, 2008

### S=2, mu=0 Meson Mass Spectrum, and some interesting possible ties to experimental meson data

Before I head out on holiday, I also wanted to post one more item:

In equation (11.8) of my earlier post at:

https://jayryablon.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/su-3-paper-20.pdf

I showed the matrix inverse for mesons based on the values of S=2 and mu=0 using the parameters of the theory developed in that work (which is based on the post I made a few hours ago).

I finished a detailed calculation of the predicted meson masses as a fraction of “.5vg” and put them in ascending order, in the following one-page listing:

https://jayryablon.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/s2-mu0-mass-spectrum.pdf

This is the type of theoretical result that we need to try to fit to experimental meson masses.  That is, this is where the “rubber meets the road.”

In this regard, I point that there are good reasons from the underlying theory to compare and take the ratios of numbers in the above with the 1+/-i factors, and to consider the SU(3) vector to be (uds) from the old quark flavor models (as opposed to the (RGB) of color).

One of these ratios is that of what is the 4,5 mass matrix element to the 1,2 element:

.625727090299/.169470755895=3.69220577135

and this should be related to the ratio of the meson K^0=d s-bar to pi^0=d d-bar.  That experimental ratio is, in fact:

K^0/pi^0 = 497.614 MeV / 134.9766 MeV = 3.6867

This is *very* close (they differ by 1.5 parts per thousand!), and could be an experimental validation of the whole theory, since the only thing not accounted for theoretically are QED corrections!

Another ratio of interest is:

.169470755895/.163577444819=1.03602765089

This is because the experimental pi^+/- to pi^0 ratio is:

pi^+/- / pi^0 = 139.5701 MeV / 134.9766 MeV = 1.0340

This also is rather tantalizing, and is off by just under 2 parts per thousand!

Still trying to figure out the whole fit, but I’ll leave you all with that for now.

Happy new year!

Jay.

### Finite Amplitudes Without +i\epsilon

To all,

I have now completed a paper at the link below, which summarizes the work I have been doing for the past two months (and in a deeper sense, for much of my adult life) to lay a foundation for understanding and calculating particle masses:

finite-amplitudes-without-i-epsilon

I have also taken the plunge and submitted this for peer review. ;-)?

The abstract is as follows:

By carefully reviewing how the invariant amplitude M is arrived at in the simplest Yang-Mills gauge group SU(2), we show how to arrive at a finite, pole-free amplitudes without having to resort to the “+i$\epsilon$ prescription.”  We first review how gauge boson mass is generated in the SU(2) action via spontaneous symmetry breaking in the standard model, and then carefully consider the formation of finite, on-shell amplitudes, without +i$\epsilon$.

Comments are welcome, and I wish everyone a happy holiday and New Year!

Jay.

## December 11, 2008

### Understanding the QCD Meson Mass Spectrum

Dear Friends:

It has been awhile since I last posted and it is good to be back.

Almost two years ago in the course of my work on Yang Mills, I came across what I believe is an approach by which mass spectrum of the massive mesons of QCD might be understood.  I had what I still believe is the right concept, and many of the pieces, but I could not figure out the right execution of the concept in complete detail.  Over the past year and a half I walked away from this to let the dust settle and to also arrive at a place where the basic principles of quantum field theory were no longer “new” to me but had become somewhat ingrained.  Now, I believe I have found the right way to execute this concept, and the results are intriguing.

In the file linked below, which I will update on a regular basis in the coming days:

I review how mass is known to be generated in SU(2), as a template for considering SU(3) QCD.  I have tried to explain as simply as possible, what I believe to be the origin of QCD meson masses, as well as to lay the foundation for theoretically predicting these.  Keep in mind, finding out how the vector mesons of QCD obtain their non-zero masses, which make the QCD interaction short range despite supposedly-massless gluons, is one aspect of the so-called “mass gap” problem, see point 1) on page 3 of
http://www.claymath.org/millennium/Yang-Mills_Theory/yangmills.pdf at
http://www.claymath.org/millennium/Yang-Mills_Theory/.

Then, I extend this development, in detail, to SU(3).

Several interesting results are already here:

1)  This approach neatly solves the problem of propagator poles (infinities) in a manner which I believe has not heretofore been discovered.  Goodbye to the +i\eta prescription, off mass-shell particles, and other inelegant dodges to achieve a finite propagator.

2) This approach may solve the confinement and the mass gap problems simultaneously.  It is important to understand that electroweak SU(2)xU(1) is a special case in which the gauge bosons are synonymous with the observed vector mesons, but that in SU(3) and higher order theories they are not.  The gauge bosons aka gluons, which show up in the Lagrangian, are not observed.  What is observed are the vector mesons which pass through to the denominator of the propagator in the invariant amplitude.

3) There emerges is a quantum number that is restricted to three discrete values, and depending on which value of chosen, all the meson masses are scaled up or down on a wholesale basis.  I believe that this may resolve the problem of generation replication.

I expect to be churning out mass calculations in the next day or two.  You may wish to check out the meson mass tables at http://pdg.lbl.gov/2008/tables/rpp2008-qtab-mesons.pdf, because that table contains the data which I am going to try to fit to equation (6.1), via (6.5).

Hope you enjoy!

Jay.

## June 30, 2008

### Foldy-Wouthuysen, continued

Just for the heck of it, I did a calculation of what happens to the mass matrix $M\equiv \beta m$ during the transformation from the Dirac-Pauli representation to the Newton-Wigner representation via Foldy-Wouthuysen.  This is shown in:

https://jayryablon.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/foldy-wouthuysen.pdf

Not sure where to go from there, but I’ll be away the rest of the week on vacation, so I’ll take another look when I return.

Interested in any further thoughts anyone may have.

Jay

## June 29, 2008

### Might Foldy-Wouthuysen Transformations Contain a Hidden Fermion Mass Generation Mechanism?

I have been looking over the following three links for the Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation from the Dirac-Pauli to the Newton-Wigner representation of Dirac’s equation:

The first shows the calculation itself of this transformation:

The second, an excellent and lucid exposition of the physics (why this is of interest), is to be found at:

The third, dealing with Zitterbewegung motion and the velocity operator in the Dirac-Pauli representation, is at:

What I would like to discuss, for the purpose of getting your reactions as to whether I am on a sensible track, is the possibility that a mechanism for generating fermion mass may be hidden in all of this.

I say this in particular because in the Dirac-Pauli representation, the velocity operator is given by:

$v^{k} =\alpha ^{k}$ (1)

where $\alpha ^{k} = \gamma ^{0} \gamma^{k}$, see reference III.  Further, the eigenvalues of this velocity operator constrain the velocity of the Fermion of be the speed of light, see reference II in the middle of page 3.  This means that the fermion must be massless and luminous, in the Dirac-Pauli representation.  Why this is so, has long been a mystery, and is thought not to make any sense, for obvious reasons.

Now, transform into the Newton-Wigner representation via Foldy-Wouthuysen.  The velocity operator in Newton-Wigner now takes the classical form:

$v^{k} =dx^{k} /dt$   (2)

where $x^{k}$ is the position operator.  But even more importantly, Newton-Wigner permits a range of eigenvalues less than the speed of light, and so, the fermions permitted by Newton-Wigner are massless and sub-luminous.

Following this to its logical conclusion, this seems to suggest that somewhere hidden in the Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation, we have gone from a fermion which is massless and luminous, to one which has a finite, non-zero rest mass and travels at sub-luminous velocity.  It seems, then, that it would be important to specifically trace how the velocity operator (1) of the Dirac-Pauli representation with $\pm c$ eigenvalues transforms into the velocity operator (2) of Newton-Wigner which allows a continuous, sub-luminous velocity spectrum, and at the same time, to trace through how the rest mass goes from necessarily zero (with decoupled chiral components), to non-zero with chiral couplings.

By doing so, perhaps one would find a mechanism for generating fermion masses.

One contrast to make here: think about how vector boson masses are generated.  One starts with a Lagrangian in which the boson mass term is omitted entirely.  Then, via a well-knows technique, one breaks the symmetry and reveals a boson mass.  Perhaps the mystery of luminous velocity eigenvalues in the Dirac-Pauli representation is telling us a similar thing: Start out with a Dirac-Pauli Lagrangian in which the mass of the fermion is zero, i.e., without a mass term.  Then, the +/- c velocity eigenvalues make sense.  Transform that into the Newton-Wigner representation.  Somewhere along the line, a mass must appear, because a subliminous velocity appears.

I will, of course, try to pinpoint how this all happens, if it does indeed happen.  But I would for now like some reactions as to the tree up which I am barking.

Thanks,

Jay.

## June 19, 2008

### A New Lab Note: Commutation of Linear Rest Mass with Canonical Position

It has been awhile since my last blog entry, but if you want to check out some my recent wanderings through physicsland, check out sci.physics.foundations, relativity, and research.

Here, I would like to show a rather simple calculation, which may cast a different light on how one needs to think about the canonical commutation relationship $\left[x_{j} ,p_{k} \right]=i\eta _{jk} ;\; j,k=1,2,3$.  I would very much like your comments in helping me sort this through.  You may download this in pdf form at https://jayryablon.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/linear-mass-commutator-calculation.pdf.

I.  A Known Square Mass Commutation Calculation

Consider a particle of mass m as a single particle system.  Consider canonical coordinates $x_{\mu }$, and that at least the space coordinates $x_{j} ;\; j=1,2,3$ are operators.  If we require that the mass m must commute with all operators, then we must have $\left[x_{\mu } ,m\right]=0$, and by easy extension, $\left[x_{\mu } ,m^{2} \right]=0$.  It is well known that the commutation condition $\left[x_{\mu } ,m^{2} \right]=0$, taken together with the on-shell mass relationship$m^{2} =p^{\sigma } p_{\sigma }$ and the single-particle canonical commutation relationship $\left[x_{j} ,p_{k} \right]=i\eta _{jk} ;\; j,k=1,2,3$, where $diag\left(\eta _{\mu \nu } \right)=\left(-1,+1,+1,+1\right)$ is the Minkowski tensor, leads inexorably to the commutation relationship:

$\left[x_{k} ,p_{0} \right]=-ip_{k} /p^{0} =-iv_{k}$   (1.1)

where $v_{k}$ is the particle velocity (in c=1 units) along the kth coordinate.  I leave the detailed calculation as an exercise for the reader not familiar with this calculation, and refer also to the sci.physics.research thread at http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-142092.html or http://groups.google.com/group/sci.physics.research/browse_frm/thread/d78cbfecf703ff6a.

I would ask for your comments on the following calculation, which is totally analogous to the calculation that leads to (1.1), but which is done using the linear mass m rather than the square mass $m^{2}$, and using the Dirac equation written as $m\psi =\gamma ^{\nu } p_{\nu } \psi$, in lieu of what is, in essence, the Klein Gordon equation $m^{2} \phi =p^{\sigma } p_{\sigma } \phi$ that leads to (1.1).

2.  Maybe New?? Linear Mass Commutation Calculation

$m\psi =\gamma ^{\nu } p_{\nu } \psi$ .  (2.1)

Require that:

$\left[x_{\mu } ,m\right]=0$   (2.2)

Continue to use the canonical commutator $\left[x_{j} ,p_{k} \right]=ig_{jk}$.  Multiply (2.1) from the left by $x_{\mu }$ noting that $\left[\gamma ^{\nu } ,x_{\mu } \right]=0$ to write:

$x_{\mu } m\psi =\gamma ^{\nu } x_{\mu } p_{\nu } \psi =\gamma ^{0} x_{\mu } p_{0} \psi +\gamma ^{j} x_{\mu } p_{j} \psi$ .  (2.3)

This separates into:

$\left\{\begin{array}{c} {x_{0} m\psi =\gamma ^{0} x_{0} p_{0} \psi +\gamma ^{j} x_{0} p_{j} \psi } \\ {x_{k} m\psi =\gamma ^{0} x_{k} p_{0} \psi +\gamma ^{j} x_{k} p_{j} \psi } \end{array}\right.$ .  (2.4)

Now, use the canonical relation $\left[x_{j} ,p_{k} \right]=i\eta _{jk}$ to commute the space (k) equation, thus:

$\begin{array}{l} {x_{k} m\psi =\gamma ^{0} x_{k} p_{0} \psi +\gamma ^{j} x_{k} p_{j} \psi =\gamma ^{0} x_{k} p_{0} \psi +\gamma ^{j} \left(p_{j} x_{k} +i\eta _{jk} \right)\, \psi } \\ {=\gamma ^{0} x_{k} p_{0} \psi +\gamma ^{j} p_{j} x_{k} \psi +i\gamma _{k} \psi } \\ {=\gamma ^{0} x_{k} p_{0} \psi +mx_{k} \psi -\gamma ^{0} p_{0} x_{k} \psi +i\gamma _{k} \psi } \end{array}$ .  (2.5)

In the final line, we use Dirac’s equation written as $mx_{\mu } \psi =\gamma ^{\nu } p_{\nu } x_{\mu } \psi =\gamma ^{0} p_{0} x_{\mu } \psi +\gamma ^{j} p_{j} x_{\mu } \psi$, and specifically, the $\mu =k$ component equation $\gamma ^{j} p_{j} x_{k} \psi =mx_{k} \psi -\gamma ^{0} p_{0} x_{k} \psi$.

If we require that $\left[x_{\mu } ,m\right]=0$, which is (2.2), then (2.5) reduces easily to:

$\gamma ^{0} \left[x_{k} ,p_{0} \right]\psi =-i\gamma _{k} \psi$ ,  (2.6)

Finally, multiply from the left by $\gamma ^{0}$, and employ $\gamma ^{0} \gamma _{k} \equiv \alpha _{k}$ and $\gamma ^{0} \gamma ^{0} =1$ to write:

$\left[x_{k} ,p_{0} \right]\, \psi =-i\alpha _{k} \psi$ .  (2.7)

If we contrast (2.7) to (1.1) written as $\left[x_{k} ,p_{0} \right]\phi =-iv_{k} \phi$, we see that the velocity $p_{k} /p^{0} =v_{k}$ has been replaced by the Dirac operator $\alpha _{k}$, that is, $v_{k} \to \alpha _{k}$.

3.  Questions

Here are my first set of questions:

1)  Is the calculation leading to (2.7) correct, and is (2.7) a correct result, or have I missed something along the way?

2)  If (2.7) is correct, has anyone seen this result before?  If so where?

3)  Now use the plane wave $\psi =ue^{ip^{\sigma } x_{\sigma } }$ so that we can work with the Dirac spinors $u\left(p^{\mu } \right)$, and rewrite (2.7) as:

$\left\{\begin{array}{c} {\left(\alpha _{k} -\lambda \right)\, u=0} \\ {\lambda =i\left[x_{k} ,p_{0} \right]} \end{array}\right.$

The upper member of (3.1) is an eigenvalue equation.  Reading out this equation, I would say that the commutators $\lambda =i\left[x_{k} ,p_{0} \right]$ are the eigenvalues of the Dirac $\alpha _{k}$ matrices, which are:

${\bf \alpha }=\left(\begin{array}{cc} {0} & {{\bf \sigma }} \\ {{\bf \sigma }} & {0} \end{array}\right)$ and ${\bf \alpha }=\left(\begin{array}{cc} {-{\bf \sigma }} & {0} \\ {0} & {{\bf \sigma }} \end{array}\right)$ ,  (3.2)

in the respective Pauli/Dirac and Weyl representations, and that the u are the eigenvectors associated with these eigenvalues $\lambda =i\left[x_{k} ,p_{0} \right]$.  Am I wrong?  If not, how would one interpret this result?  Maybe the commutators $\left[x_{j} ,p_{k} \right]=i\eta _{jk}$ can be discussed in the abstract, but it seems to me that the commutators $\lambda =i\left[x_{k} ,p_{0} \right]$ can only be discussed as the eigenvalues of the matrices $\alpha _{k}$ with respect to the eigenstate vectors u.  This, it seems, would put canonical commutation into a somewhat different perspective than is usual.

Just as Dirac’s equation reveals some features that cannot be seen strictly from the Klein Gordon equation, the calculation here seems to reveal some features about the canonical commutators that the usual calculation based on $\left[x_{\mu } ,m^{2} \right]=0$ and $m^{2} =p^{\sigma } p_{\sigma }$ cannot, by itself, reveal.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on this, before I proceed downstream from here.

Thanks,

Jay.

## May 8, 2008

### How Precisely can we Measure an Electron’s Heisenberg Uncertainty? (or, How Certain is Uncertainty?)

In a May 24 post Heisenberg Uncertainty and Schwinger Anomaly: Two Sides of the Same Coin?, I set forth the hypothesis that the anomalous magnetic moment first characterized by Schwinger, may in fact be a manifestation of the Heisenberg uncertainty relationship, and in particular, that the excess of the uncertainty over $\hbar/2$ may in fact originate from the same basis as the excess of the intrinsic spin magnetic moment g-factor g, over the Dirac value of 2.  This hypothesis is most transparently written as $\Delta x\Delta p=\frac{\left|g\right|}{2} \frac{\hbar }{2} =\left(1+\frac{\alpha}{2\pi } +\ldots \right)\frac{\hbar }{2}$, where $\alpha$ is the running electromagnetic coupling for which $\alpha \left(\mu \right)\to 1/137.036$ at low probe energy $\mu$.  I also pointed out that a crucial next step was to employ a calculation similar to that shown at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle#Wave_mechanics, but for a non-Gaussian wavefunction.

I have now concluded a full calculation along these lines, of the precise uncertainty associated with a particle wavefunction of the general form $\psi (x)=Ne^{-\frac{1}{2} A'x^{2} +B'x-V'\left(x\right)}$.  (The primes are a convenience used in calculation where we define $A\equiv A'+A'*$, etc. when calculating expected values, to take into account the possibility of the wavefunction parameters being imaginary.)  While I refer to $V'\left(x\right)$ as an “intrinsic potential,” it is perhaps better to think about this simply as an unspecified, completely-general polynomial in x, which renders the wavefunction completely general.  I have linked an updated draft of my paper which includes this calculation in full and applies it to the hypothesis set forth above, at Heisenberg Uncertainty and the Schwinger Anomaly. While the calculation is lengthy (and took a fair bit of effort to perform, then cross-check), the essence of what is contained in this paper can be summarized quite simply.  So I shall lay out a brief summary below, using the equation numbers which appear in the above-linked paper.

The essence of the results demonstrated in this paper is as follows.  Start with the generalized non-Gaussian wavefunction:

$\psi (x)=Ne^{-\frac{1}{2} A'x^{2} +B'x-V'\left(x\right)}$  (4.1)

Calculate its uncertainty by calculating its Fourier transform $\psi (p)$ (see (6.1)), by calculating each of its variances $(\Delta x)^2$ (5.4) and $(\Delta p)^2$ (7.4), and then by multiplying these together and taking the square root to arrive at the uncertainty.  The calculation is lengthy but straightforward, and it leads to the bottom line result:

$\Delta x\Delta p=\frac{\hbar }{2} \sqrt{1-2A'\left(\frac{dV'}{dB'} \right)^{2} +4B'\frac{dV'}{dB'} } =\frac{\hbar }{2} \sqrt{1-4A'V'\frac{d^{2} V'}{dB'^{2} } +4V'}$.   (8.5)

It is important to emphasize that (8.5) is a mathematical result that is totally independent of the hypothesized relationship of the uncertainty to the intrinsic spin.  So, if you ever been dissatisfied with the inequality of the Heisenberg relationship $\Delta x\Delta p\ge {\tfrac{1}{2}} \hbar$ and wondered what the exact uncertainty is for a given wavefunction, you will find this calculated with precision in sections 4 through 8, and the answer is (8.5) above.  The upshot is that (8.5) above is the precise uncertainty for a wavefunction (4.1) with A’, B’ and V’ all real.  We cannot give a position and momentum with precision, but we can give an uncertainty with precision.  The reasons for having A’, B’ and V’ be real are developed in the paper, but suffice it to say that A’, B’ real is necessary to avert a divergent uncertainty, and if V’ were imaginary rather than real, the uncertainty would always be exactly equal to $\hbar/2$.

Now, with the result (8.5) in hand, we return to the original hypothesis which, if it is true, would require that:

$\frac{\Delta x\Delta p}{\hbar /2} =\sqrt{1+4B'\frac{dV'}{dB'} -2A'\left(\frac{dV'}{dB'} \right)^{2} } =\sqrt{1+4V'-4A'V'\frac{d^{2} V'}{dB'^{2} } } =\frac{\left|g\right|}{2} =1+\frac{a}{2\pi } +\ldots$   (9.1)

Using the series expansion for $\sqrt{1+x}$, we then make the connection:

$V'\equiv \alpha /4\pi$    (9.5)

Now, it behooves us to return to the wavefunction (4.1), and use (9.5) to write:

$\psi (x)=Ne^{-\frac{1}{2} A'x^{2} +B'x-\frac{\alpha }{4\pi } }$,    (9.6)

and to rewrite the uncertainty relationship (9.1) as:

$\frac{\Delta x\Delta p}{\hbar /2} =\sqrt{1+\frac{1}{\pi } B'\frac{d\alpha }{dB'} -\frac{1}{8\pi ^{2} } A'\left(\frac{d\alpha }{dB'} \right)^{2} } =\sqrt{1+\frac{\alpha }{\pi } -A'\frac{\alpha }{4\pi ^{2} } \frac{d^{2} \alpha }{dB'^{2} } } =\frac{\left|g\right|}{2} =1+\frac{\alpha }{2\pi } +\ldots$ (9.7)

Now, let’s get directly to the point: an electron with the wavefunction (9.6), with $A'$ and $B'$ real, will have the uncertainty relationship (9.7), period.  For $\alpha =1/137.036$, the leading uncertainty term $\sqrt{1+\frac{\alpha }{\pi } } =1.00116073607$, while the leading anomaly term $1+\frac{\alpha }{2\pi } =1.00116140973$.  These two terms differ by just under 7 parts in $10^{-7}$.  Therefore, we can state the following:

TheoremFor a wavefunction $\psi (x)=Ne^{-\frac{1}{2} A'x^{2} +B'x-\frac{\alpha }{4\pi } }$ with $A'$ and $B'$ real, the uncertainty ratio $\frac{\Delta x\Delta p}{\hbar /2}$, to leading order in $\alpha$, differs from the intrinsic Schwinger g-factor $g/2$ by less than 7 parts in $10^{-7}$.

We have stated this as a theorem, because this is a simple statement of fact, and involves no interpretation or hypothesis whatsoever.  However, in order to sustain the broader hypothesis

$\Delta x\Delta p=\frac{\left|g\right|}{2} \frac{\hbar }{2} \ge \frac{\hbar }{2}$,   (3.4)

we do need to engage in some interpretation.

First, we define (9.6) as the intrinsic wavefunction of a ground state electron with no orbital angular momentum and no applied external potential.  And, we define (9.7) as the intrinsic uncertainty of this intrinsic wavefunction.  Not every electron will have this wavefunction or this uncertainty or this g-factor, but this wavefunction becomes the baseline electron wavefunction from which any variation is due to extrinsic factors, such as possessing orbital angular momentum or being placed into an external potential, for example, that of a proton.  Thus, our hypothesis (3.4) is a hypothesis about the intrinsic uncertainty associated with the intrinsic wavefunction, and it says that:

Reformulated HypothesisThe intrinsic uncertainty associated with the intrinsic electron wavefunction is identical with the intrinsic g-factor of the anomalous magnetic moment.

The final section 10 of this draft paper linked above, is in progress at this time.  What I am presently trying to do, is make some sense of what appears to be a “new” type of g-factor $\left|g_{{\rm ext}} \right|$, emanating from an extrinsic potential (polynomial) $V_{{\rm ext}}$ in the wavefunction:

$\psi (x)=Ne^{-\frac{1}{2} A'x^{2} +B'x-V_{int} \left(x\right)-V_{{\rm ext}} \left(x\right)} =Ne^{-\frac{1}{2} A'x^{2} +B'x-\frac{\alpha }{4\pi } -V_{{\rm ext}} \left(x\right)}$   (10.1)

This new g-factor is defined in (10.2), and is isolated in (10.3) as such:

$\begin{array}{l} {\frac{\left|g_{{\rm ext}} \right|}{2} =\sqrt{1+\frac{1}{\pi } B'\frac{d\alpha +4\pi dV_{{\rm ext}} }{dB'} -\frac{1}{8\pi ^{2} } A'\left(\frac{d\alpha +4\pi dV_{{\rm ext}} }{dB'} \right)^{2} } -\sqrt{1+\frac{1}{\pi } B'\frac{d\alpha }{dB'} -\frac{1}{8\pi ^{2} } A'\left(\frac{d\alpha }{dB'} \right)^{2} } } \\ {\quad \quad =\sqrt{1+\frac{\alpha +4\pi V_{{\rm ext}} }{\pi } -A'\frac{\alpha +4\pi V_{{\rm ext}} }{4\pi ^{2} } \frac{d^{2} \alpha +4\pi d^{2} V_{{\rm ext}} }{dB'^{2} } } -\sqrt{1+\frac{\alpha }{\pi } -A'\frac{\alpha }{4\pi ^{2} } \frac{d^{2} \alpha }{dB'^{2} } } } \end{array}$.   (10.3)

In section 10, I have provided my “first impression” of where this new g-factor may fit in, in relation to the Paschen-Back effect, but would be interested in the thoughts of the reader regarding what to make of the above g-factor (10.3) and where it might fit into the “scheme of things.”

Thanks for listening, and for your thoughts.

Jay.

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