Tuesday, July 03, 2012

At the eve of discovery



The discovery of 125 GeV boson seems to be more or less established fact. Most journalists and quite (too) many bloggers have firmly decided to identify this resonance as Higgs and are irritated because experimentalists have not been willing to declare a discovery of Higgs yet. (Too) many physics bloggers are more like fans of football team rather than cool science journalists.

Lubos identifies the new state with Higgs without hesitation and has even seen the discovery of this Higgs-without-doubt as a victory of the superstring model: I could not follow the logic. But Lubos has also known for long time from super-secret sources that also standard SUSY has been more or less discovered. Peter Woit is equally uncritical. Phil Gibbs and Jester are exceptions in the choir. They have written about nice articles about the difficulties of the Higgs interpretation if one takes fully seriously the existing data. Higgs decays to two photons should take place via WW intermediate state but the rate for the direct WW production is consistent with zero.

Tomorrow we will know much more. My expectation is that experimentalists will not talk about discovery of Higgs. The announcement about a discovery of new particle looks however quite plausible to me.

In this kind of situation theoretician with visions deviating from mainstream thinking of course feels excitement and stress. I am not an exception to this rule. What if the production rate and branching ratios are those predicted by standard model? Is my vision wrong in this case? How it could be wrong? Can I modify it without losing something essential?

To begin with, to me a rather plausible interpretation for 125 GeV state would be as pion-like state of scaled up copy of hadron physics. Two-photon decay would be due to axial anomaly and involve only photon loop instead of W loop as in the case of Higgs. I could be wrong. Fermi has produced 5 sigma evidence for the existence of 145 GeV state and also indications for a lighter state around 125 GeV (see the previous posting). The heavier state is also a good candidate for pion-like state. Therefore I must be ready to consider also alternative interpretations for 125 GeV state. Could one imagine that it has
some Higgs like characteristics?

Recall that standard model Higgs has two functions. Higgs vacuum expectation gives masses for fermions and weak gauge bosons and Higgs gives longitudinal components for massive gauge bosons. Could one have Higgs like states performing only one or none of these functions?

  1. In TGD framework fermion massivation by Higgs vacuum expectation is replaced by p-adic thermodynamics giving the dominant contribution to the masses. One cannot however exclude scalar vacuum expectations giving small corrections to fermion masses. p-Adic thermodynamics as a microscopic mechanism of fermion massivation is so beautiful and predictive that it beats massivation based on Higgs expectation, which in TGD framework can be seen as a phenomenological parametrization at best.

  2. In the case of weak gauge bosons p-adic temperature would be probably smaller (T=1/2 instead of T=1 for fermions) and the analog of Higgs expectation could give a significant or even dominating contribution to weak gauge boson masses. There are however conceptual problems. What Higgs expectation means? Does it characterize coherent state? Does this expectation have classical space-time correlate as gauge bosons have?
What about the second function of Higgs as provider of longitudinal polarizations for massive gauge bosons?
  1. TGD allows to imagine the existence of Higgs like states (see the previous posting). They generalize the notions of scalar and pseudo-scalar in Minkowski space to vector and pseudo-vector in 8-D imbedding space with components only in CP2 directions defining the analogs of polarizations. These states appear always as singlet and charged triplet and are very much analogous to 1+3 formed by electroweak gauge bosons.

  2. In standard model the three components of standard model Higgs also provide the longitudinal components of weak bosons W and Z. Zero energy ontology allows to understand the massivation of spin 1 bosons as something unavoidable without Higgs like particle. And, I do not have any elegant proposal how the possible scalar 1+3 could transform to longitudinal components of weak bosons and single neutral Higgs. Thus I have tendency to conclude that if Higgs like states exist in TGD Universe they appear as full multiplets 1+3.
I could of course be wrong! Maybe Higgs could after all serve as provider of longitudinal polarizations. Could one imagine the classical counterparts of gauge bosons eating Higgs components in classical TGD? To get some perspective, consider modified Dirac equation for induced spinors at preferred extremals of Kähler action (see the previous posting for a considerable progress in this respect).
  1. For the TGD counterparts of induced Dirac equation both gamma matrices and gauge potentials appearing in the modified Dirac equation are induced from those of imbedding space by simply projecting them to the space-time surface. This implies that induced gamma matrices contain also CP2 part. This gives rise to new kind of couplings proportional to the contraction of gauge potential with CP2 part of induced gamma matrices.

    Induced gamma matrices are actually replaced by modified gamma matrices defined by Kähler action to obtain supersymmetry and internal consistency of the theory but the conclusion remains the same. Modified gamma matrices are proportional to Maxwell energy momentum tensor expressible in terms of Einstein equations using Einstein tensor and metric for the proposed ansatz for preferred extremals. Could these couplings involving energy momentum tensor and thus mass mimic Higgs couplings?



  2. Quantum classical correspondence requires the existence of classical counterparts of quanta, also Higgs. My inability to imagine any convincing candidate has been one reason for my skepticism concerning Higgs like states. While writing this I however decided to try once again. I failed but learned that em charge as isospin like quantum number is conserved in TGD classically - something very non-trivial that I have taken as granted and shown to be true only for the octonionic representation of imnedding space gamma matrices.

    1. An important aspect of the standard model Higgs mechanism is that it respects em charge leaving photons massless. In standard model the conservation of em charge defined as isospin like quantum number is non-trivial since the presence of classical gauge fields induces transitions between different charge states of fermions. In second quantization this problem is circumvented by replacing classical gauge fields with quantized ones. The so called unitary gauge defined by a gauge transformation depending on Higgs fields allows to express the action in terms of physical (in general massive) fields and makes charge conservation explicit.

    2. How the conservation of em charge is obtained in TGD? Doesn't one have the same problem but as much worse variant since classical long range electro-weak gauge fields are unavoidable in TGD? Can one get rid of the problem? Could it make sense to speak about unitary gauge also in TGD framework? Could one turn around this idea to derive classical Higgs from the possibly existing gauge transformation to unitary gauge? The answer is negative. There is no need for the unitary gauge. Em charge is conserved automatically! This sounds miraculous but is one of the wonderful aspects of CP2 geometry.

    3. The point is that the Kähler form of CP2 is covariantly constant and one can identify covariantly constant em charge as a matrix of form Q=aI+bJklΣkl: the coefficients a and b are different for quarks and leptons (different chiralities of H-spinors). This matrix is covariantly constant also with respect to the induced spinor structure and commutes with Dirac operator (be it the TGD counterpart of the ordinary massless Dirac operator or modified Dirac operator). Therefore one can choose the modes of induced spinor field to have a well-defined em charge at each point of space-time surface. That em charge in this spinorial sense is conserved in the classical gauge fields defined by the induced spinor connection is highly non-trivial and not true in standard model - a strong argument in favor of TGD. The covariantly constant Kähler form of CP2 is responsible for the conservation of em charge and derives from the supersymmetry generated by covariantly constant right-handed neutrino.
To sum up: situation could not be more exciting for a theoretician whose views about particle physics are more than just the usual text book wisdom.

Addition: According to leaked video a new particle is found. The particle has a clear sharp peak in the diphoton channel, clear signal in the ZZ channel, inconclusive behavior in other channels, and extra tests are needed to find out whether it deviated from the Standard Model.

Therefore it seems that the interpretation as pionlike state of scaled up hadron physics predicted by TGD is not excluded. By listening the talk of Joe Candela one learns that situation concerning interpretation is still open. Note that chairman Candela emphasizes the possiblity of entirely new physics, of new space-time dimensions, and of new particles. One could take this as a signal that something else than Higgs is in question and there already might exist unpublished data about new particle candidates. New hadron physics predicts just this! One of key questions concerns the rate for the decays to gamma pair: is it still too high by factor of order two for standard model Higgs interpretation to make sense? We will learn about this today!

For the video and discussion about it see the blog of Phil Gibbs.

Addition:Phil Gibbs gave the first data about CMS reprsentations. The two-gamma signal is more than two times too high still. To me this suggests that something else than standard model Higgs is in question. In the image text Phil says "Discovery" but does not specify what has been discovered. Maybe this is a wise choice;-).

Addition: Conclusion: the discovery is seen by most commentators as a discovery of standard model Higgs although the fact is that the production rate for two-gamma states is still two times too high. Interesting food for thoughts of a social psychologist;-). Sometimes thinkers feel themselves very lonely in the middle of crowd;-).

Addition: The state above about conservation of electromagnetic charge in spinorial sense was not quite correct. The constancy of right handed neutrino is needed but is not enough.

  1. I did later a more precise analysis and the conclusion was that the solutions of the modified Dirac equations for which em charge is conserved in classical induced gauge fields, are restricted to 2-dimensional surfaces of space-time surface. String model in 4-D space-time becomes part of TGD: this has been of course conjectured for a long time ago.

  2. This also means that their ends at light-like 3-surfaces and at 3-D space-like 3-surfaces at ends of space-time surface define braid strands. Just this picture was derived earlier from finite measurement resolution. Also 3-D modified Dirac at light-like 3-surfaces was shown to lead to the same conclusion (localization of solutions to braid strands). Number theoretical vision suggests the same picture. Imbedding space would be octonionic, space-time surfaces associative or co-associative (quaternionic of co-quaternionic) and partonic 2-surfaces and string world sheets commugative or co-commutative (complex or hyper-complex).

  3. A further outcome is a rather detailed understanding of super-conformal symmetries in TGD framework having implications also for the space-time SUSY in TGD sense. In particular, the role of right-handed neutrino in the extension of super-conformal symmetries to 4-D context is understood.

  4. Also Yangian symmetry emerges naturally as well as understanding how Super-Kac-Moody symmetry for string world sheets is dual for super gauge symmetry.
For details see this.

12 comments:

Ulla said...

Lubos says:
In quantum field theory, the Higgs field is – much like the electromagnetic field, the W-boson field, the electron's Dirac field, and other fields – an elementary entity that can't be decomposed to anything simpler. Phundamental, not composite, as for technicolor/pion model.
Spinors: one simply has a Higgs doublet of fields, h1(x,y,z,t) and h2(x,y,z,t), at each point of the spacetime. They're quantum fields (with hats) which means that the energy carried in the waves upon these fields is quantized (it is effectively composed of particles).
all fields – electromagnetic field, Higgs fields, electron field, and others – may be derived from more fundamental building blocks, namely strings (and branes) and the string fields that create them.

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/29110/origin-of-the-higgs-field?rq=1

Hans de Vries: The zero mass is not due to a special value of the Weinberg angle, the angle which determines the mass of the other three bosons W+, W− and Z The mass is zero because the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field doublet is single valued rather than two valued. This means it can in principle always be expressed by.

⟨ϕ⟩ = (0/v)

It's the 0 here which leaves one of the four bosons massless.

So it is this combination which doesn't interact with the vacuum expectation value,

(1*0/0*0)(0/v)≡(0/0)

and it is this combination which represents the massless photon.

Continuous mass spectrum for Higgs field.
there is no simple particle interpretation if the mass spectrum is not delta function valued, which I take it can be described as due to destructive interference between the different mass components.

uncertainty dictates that a particle with finite lifetime cannot have a delta-valued mass spectrum. You'll always get a continuous distribution whose width depends on the half-life.

Ron Maimon: Otherwise extra dimensions with an unconfined Higgs field in the extra dimensions. a scalar particle in 1 extra dimension, and it interacts with particles on a world which is 3+1 dimensional, it's propagator between interaction vertices, see text.
The result is an unparticle spectrum with a continuous density of mass past m^2, the continuous density is exactly the possible k25 values.

I think p-adic fields could be something like this? Except we have a 'particle' now, seen in a very narrow window, due to massive input of energy. Fermions were created in such circumstances.

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/10552/is-there-literature-on-a-continuous-mass-spectrum-for-the-higgs-field?rq=1

Remember: This is SM.

Orwin said...

Hans is fudging the uncertainty: an unstable resonance shows energy-time uncertainty, but energy is not mass. This is where you need a parton model, as Feynman used: the energy includes virtual flux, which affects stability but is not the focal entity. Very few understand these things, like renormalization.

Ulla: if torsion is not due to backgroud, think axial anomaly.

donkerheid said...

Dear Matti,
Wouldn't you be happy with a 125 GeV Higgs particle? :)
You earlier predicted 129 GeV.

Ulla said...

This is why G is there? But to link strong force and G seems very peculiar. Axial anomaly? You mean intrinsic angles, whatever they might be? Like to blow up an hadron?

Now it seems this fuzzyness just makes things worse. If this is not Higgs, then what? And the twin of Higgs is a graviton (spin 2), which maybe is a result of Kaluza-Klein thinking?
Scaled-up variants, of what? Scaled up bottom quarks would be very near Higgs, but that doesn't explain the W-boson link. So we are left with the weak-strong bondings, hinted at by the 145 GeV 'particle' earlier.
???
Name on the new force? It has no angle they said? Is that possible?

Ulla said...

Axial = longitudinal fields? This means a structure on the Higgs field too? But with spin 0?

No angle = spherical, and distortions are due to asymmetry of the inner structure, versus distortions from the sphere?

A comment, anon. on Vixra:
At least one of the vector bosons is virtual (which makes it a 3-body decay, thus suppressed relative to bb). Comment on Crowells thinking about decay and Higgs mass inconclusiveness.
http://blog.vixra.org/2012/06/29/whats-the-deal-with-h-%e2%86%92-ww/#comment-17945

Now I will shut up.

Orwin said...

1. SM is massless due to time-reversal symmetry from Dirac equation (positron = -T*electron).
2. Salam-Weinberg theory was designed for SU(5), lost to neutrino anomalies. That was Hoyle-Narlikar take on heavy aether from Victorian spiritualism via Abbe Lemaitre SJ - creation and destruction operators.
3. Now in F-theory, 4Higgs is dual to 2vortex!!!! You better believe it: Matti and CERN are now formally equivallent!!!!! They owe him the hugest appology, but the data is under-explained.

"Agreement with the standard quantization via the Algebraic Bethe Ansatz implies the existence of an isomorphism between the chiral ring of the 4d theory and that of a certain two-dimensional theory. The latter can be understood as the worldvolume theory on a surface operator/vortex string probing the Higgs branch of the same 4d theory."

Check it out at:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.5726

Zephir said...

What we can see is the whole line of bumps, the
periodicity of which is quite apparent. IMO it's not experimental noise, but a real artifact, corresponding
this graph at the scale AdS/CFT dual to cosmological scale. IMO the most probable explanation of the IMO diphoton excess is the fact, the Standard Model is not complete yet and it allows the forth generation of particles: the superheavy quarks and neutrinos. The pairing of these particles in Higgs field is indeed the most intensive, but because these particles are extremely unstable, they decay directly into shower of gamma ray photons before they can be detected as such. Which is what we are observing by now: the excess of gamma photons pairs over the pions and muon pairs.

matpitka@luukku.com said...

To Zephir:

This periodicity is interesting. It might be information processing artifact.

On the other hand, it has been also reported that also ordinary pion has satellites with mass spacing of order few tens of GeVs. Information processing artifact again?

In any case, the scaling up by factor 512 to get scaled up hadron physics one would obtain periodicity with few tens of GeVs.
http://matpitka.blogspot.fi/2012/02/more-evidence-for-ir-regge-trajectories.html

matpitka@luukku.com said...

The recent situation in particle physics is fascinating sociologically. Theoreticians who have worked their professional life with Higgs paradigm, want desperately to believe that it is Higgs.

The twice too high rate for decays to gamma pairs reported again and again by both ATLAS and CMS is an excellent example about social forces in action. When the blogger sees the discrepancy , he just says "The rate to gamma pairs is two times too high. Interesting!". After that he continues without hesitation "Higgs has been discovered!".

Strange to me. I can understand this only as an example of phenomenon which we know so well: when you go to lift in which all people standard with back towards door, you do the same within 15 seconds!

Much more than Higgs is in the game. Scalar vacuum expectation value defines the basic paradigm of modern theoretical physics. Extremely strong social forces are fighting to keep VEV paradigm alive since everything done during last four decades in theoretical physics and cosmology relies on it. We would lose M-theory, standard SUSY, and inflationary cosmology without this paradigm (one can of course wonder whether the loss would so fatal after all!;-)).

Thanks for God that the data processing is blind!

matpitka@luukku.com said...

To Ulla:

Correction to misunderstanding. p-Adic number field has nothing to do with quantum field. "Field" has quite different meaning in this context and is shorthand for saying that the numbers system allows addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Ulla said...

Ye, Matti, I know, it is no dimension, but the analogy is there clearly. This is the reason you have 4D with hierarchies and others have extra dimensions.

I like what Orwin says :) And number trees are about periodicities.

They still have to check spin to make sure it's zero and what its parity is (e.g. scalar or pseudo-scalar) etc. says Sarfatti. http://www.facebook.com/jack.sarfatti/posts/335025549913277
He is also very near TGD, as I can see it.

A 3 body decay has no strings as in string theory. They have to be hadrons?

Ulla said...

The background is very bumpy. Maybe that tells something else than noise too? The answer was there all the time?