Sundance preons twists as a higgless source of inertial mass

[ensabah6]

Currently, the standard explanation for inertial mass is the higgs field, which gives particles their mass. Many of the SM's undefined parameters involve interactions between the particles and the higgs field, as well as the mass of the higgs boson itself.

Sundance preon braiding has twists representing charge, 1/9 I believe, and i wonder, if his model is physically correct, could electric charge play the role of inertial mass independent of the higgs field. All particles of the SM have twists which carry electric charge, except the photon, so could an electric charge in an electric field behave as though it has inertial mass, thus obviating the need of a higgs field for mass generation.

(Whether preon braiding obviates the needs for a higgs field to break E-W symmetry is a separate issue entirely).

 

[Coin]

Who are some of the people working on sundance preon braiding and/or where could one learn more about what it is?

 

[marcus]

Who are some of the people working on sundance preon braiding and/or where could one learn more about what it is?

One way is to look at entry A3 in that outline map of QG I posted
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=199768
Post #20 has some links
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=1519733#post1519733

some of the people currently active are Lee Smolin, Yidun Wan, Sundance Bilson-Thompson, Jonathan Hackett, Louis Kauffman.

The most recent paper by Smolin and Wan would have references to the earlier work
http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.1548

the simplest exposition is the 2005 paper of Bilson-Thompson---which started this line of research.
He has a video seminar talk from November 2006 on the Perimeter archive that gets the ideas across in a highly visual way. There are also audio+slides talks online from ILQGS and Loops 07, given by Smolin and others.

 

[ensabah6]

One way is to look at entry A3 in that outline map of QG I posted
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=199768
Post #20 has some links
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=1519733#post1519733

some of the people currently active are Lee Smolin, Yidun Wan, Sundance Bilson-Thompson, Jonathan Hackett, Louis Kauffman.

The most recent paper by Smolin and Wan would have references to the earlier work
http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.1548

the simplest exposition is the 2005 paper of Bilson-Thompson---which started this line of research.
He has a video seminar talk from November 2006 on the Perimeter archive that gets the ideas across in a highly visual way. There are also audio+slides talks online from ILQGS and Loops 07, given by Smolin and others.

Hi Marcus,

It appears to me though that Sundance preon braiding can be done independent of LQG, and is there a mechanism whereby when the spin networks are twisted in LQG, it creates a fractional electric charge, as required by Sundance preon braiding? And what about color charge?

In Sundance's preon braiding only the photon is untwisted, and massless. All other SM particles have twists representing electric charge, and all have mass.

Some of the SM particles are unstable, such as the W and Z bosons, are they to untwist rapidly?