Dear List members:
Some recent papers by the Indian Physicist Asfar Abbas seem to be
raising several interesting points. Hopefully there are list members who are
familiar with Abbas's work or after reading this would be willing to spend
some time reading his papers which are available at LANL archive.
Abbas proposals seem quite novel and are very much against the
grain of the current directions of fundamental physics theorizing. Because of
this it is even more important than normal to scrutinize his proposals with a
critical attitude. With that it mind I am soliciting opinions from list
members with regard to his basic points.
Abbas central thesis is that, unlike the predictions of string
theory, the property of electric charge does not exist above the electroweak
scale. Basically he maintains that all the U(1) charges, both local and
global, are created in the Universe when SU(2)XU(1) symmetry is broken. He
also proposes that the Higgs field which is the mechanism which breaks
electroweak symmetry cannot be quantized therefore we will never observes the
Higgs particle. He also maintains that gravity is also not quantifiable so
the graviton does not exist.
However his most provocative point is that the electroweak scale stands
as a causal cutoff. Since above the electroweak scale there are no defined
U(1) charges then there in no electromagnetic field. Given the lack of
electromagnetic field there is no defined or meaningful speed of light since
the speed of light is a function of the vacuum permittivity and vacuum
permeability, electric and magnetic properties.
Without a definable speed of light then the space time metric cannot
exist which he suggest makes the concept of a gravitational field
problematic. In essence he replaces the Planck scale Quantum space time chaos
with an electroweak scale casual cutoff due the non existence of the
electromagnetic field.
While it is general physics lore that electric charge is only
quantified by a grand unification theory Abbas believes that the standard
model itself accounts for electric charge quantization. This is because he
proposes that electric charge is dependent on the number of colors N_c. He
suggest that the color dependent expression of 2 gamma decay equation of the
neutral pion equals one which defines this color dependence. ( The exact same
functional relationship has been derived by Gerald L. Fitzpatrick using a
very different approach. He uses an analytic continuation of the F(op)
function to derive a lorentz two space model for electric doublet charge. In
this case also the color dependence of charge is fundamental.)
In Abbas formulation he gets
N_c^2*(Q_u^2-Q_d^2)^2=1
In Fitzpatrick's formulation he gets
Q_u= Sinhv/(exp[v]-f)
Where v=lnN_c and f is the fermion number.
The Abbas papers which relate to the topic of this post are
On The Numbers of Colors in Quantum Chromodynamics hep-ph/0009242 vl
On The Origin Of The Universe hep-ph/0003065 v2
Electric Charge, Early Universe and The Superstring Theory.hep-ph/9912244 vl
Bob Zannelli
This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.