[time 345] Proton stability and TGD


Matti Pitkanen (matpitka@pcu.helsinki.fi)
Mon, 24 May 1999 09:29:44 +0300 (EET DST)


In the latest New Scientist there is a popular article about proton
decay, or rather, about why proton does not decay. Proton decay is a
basic prediction of all unified theories except TGD. It is now clear that
the so called Grand Unified Theories as well as their supersymmetric
versions are excluded by the recent lower bound 5*10^(32) years for proton
lifetime from Super Kamiokande. The only hope is that gravitational
interaction could be somehow relevant for proton decay but string models
cannot predict anything at this stage.

The reason for proton decay is related to the naive unification dogma,
which states that all elementary fermions belong to same irreducible
representation of some very large symmetry group containing standard
model gauge group. This implies that there is gauge boson exchange
transforming two quarks to two leptons and this alone implies
baryon number nonconservation.

In TGD situation is different: gauge group is just the standard model
group containing color group and electroweak group. Quarks and leptons
correspond to different separately conserved chiralities of the spinors of
8-dimensional imbedding space H=M^4_+xCP_2. A fatal problem seems to be
caused by the fact that the quark color seems to be missing. The solution
is simple: the isometry group of CP_2 is SU(3) and color corresponds at
fundamental level to rotational motion of quark in CP_2 rather than
genuine spin like quantum number manifesting itself as additional indices
for spinor fields. In hadron length scale the color quantum numbers of
quarks are spin like for all practical purpoeses: the real nature of quark
color reveals itself only at huge energies of order 10^(-4) Planck
mass, which corresponds to CP_2 size by Uncertainty Principle.

What is encouraging is that after twenty years theoreticians are
finally beginning to admit that there might be something badly wrong
in the entire approach to unified theories, with string models included.
Better late than never!

What is paradoxal is the referees first refused to publish the first
paper suggesting proton decay since they felt the prediction was
nonsensical and personal contact to editor was needed
by the author to get the paper published. Within couple of years everyone
began to believe in proton decay and the situation was reversed: the
prediction that proton is stable would alone had made publishing of
anything related to TGD impossible during last twenty years in any
respectable journal. Perhaps the tide is now turning!

Matti Pitkanen



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