[General] Photonic electron and spin

Sat Feb 21 06:46:21 PST 2015

Andrew:

I have a very mundane view of time. Like, it’s just a measure of motion. See A World without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein along with time travel is science fiction. So things like the passage of time or travelling through time leave me cold. Ditto for spin about the time axis I’m afraid. I feel more comfortable with the Einstein-de Haas effect which “demonstrates that spin angular momentum is indeed of the same nature as the angular momentum of rotating bodies as conceived in classical mechanics”. Maybe the issue is the standing-wave nature of the electron? There’s a rotational action in the photon, and if the photon is itself going round and round just so, the two rotations maybe cancel such that the field variation looks like a standing field. But it isn’t really standing. If you have a standing wave in a cavity and you drop one of the sides, that wave is off like a shot. It moves at c from a “standing” start. It looked like it was still and stationary and standing and static, but it wasn’t. It was always dynamical. Ditto for the electron. If it wasn’t a dynamical spinor, it wouldn’t go round and round in a magnetic field. Let me put it another way: if it wasn’t spinning, your boomerang wouldn’t come back. 

As for an electron moving, IMHO one should start with Compton scattering because that’s the simplest situation. 

The way I see it is that the electron “acquires a slice” of the incident photon, such that the electron’s photonic field is no longer rotationally symmetrical. Hence the electron moves. Draw repeated circles on a piece of paper whilst somebody pulls the paper to the left. Or draw an incomplete circle, then without lifting your pen, draw another and another and another. It has net direction in space.  I’m not sure about the 3D spin component that precesses about the velocity vector. I’m struggling to visualize it. Sorry.  

Regards
John D

From: Andrew Meulenberg 
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2015 3:25 AM
To: John Williamson ; Andrew Meulenberg 
Cc: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion ; P.G. Vaidya 
Subject: Re: [General] Photonic electron and spin

Dear John W. and John D.,

Have you considered that a 'stationary' electron's spin could be about the time axis?  It has no net direction in space until it moves or has a force applied to it. At that point, the electron field (photonic) is relativistically distorted and has a 3-D spin component that precesses about the velocity (or force or field) vector. That precession determines the deBroglie wavelength (and other attributes?).

Andrew

__________________________

On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 11:09 AM, John Williamson <John.Williamson at glasgow.ac.uk> wrote:

  Hi John,

  Yes, something is spinning and it is, indeed, not cheese. The mystery of quantum spin is not its value, or even its handedness - it is more in that fact that, experimentally, it always takes just one of two values (spin "up" or spin "down"). That is - if you measure it it appears to spin either clockwise or counter-clockwise around your measurement axis with the FULL angular momentum (plus or minus - never a fraction). As you rotate your measurement axis the PROBABILITY changes as to which, of just two, values you will measure. That is - it does not act like a macrosopic spin for which one would see a smooth variation with a maximum (counter-clockwise-say) for the spin axes aligned, going to zero with the spin axis at 90 degrees then to a maximum clockwise at 180 degrees.

  What one needs to do is model the internal flow in such a way that when you project onto a spin axis (make a measurement) that this always happens. Now a spin axis as not a simple vector-it is an axial vector with respect to a momentum (or an integral over momenta for an extended body). The simplest visualisation of spin is as r cross p. where the "r" (radius) and the "p" (momentum) are perpendicular. This means that, properly, it is a tri-vector. The questions then are what is r and what is p? For our (Martin and my) model we have a characteristic r (lambda_c/4pi) and a characteristic p (m_e/ c^3) whose product gives the right value for half-integral spin (hbar/2).  This is encouraging, but not the whole story. The problem is that one may not relate the r to a massive point in space (like the (much simpler-though complicated enough) case for the hydrogen atom where the electron is compensated by the much larger proton mass. A free electron has only itself to rotate about. This means the "r" must tumble rapidly about the centre of momentum of the electron - at a frequency that is a multiple of the Compton frequency. Why must this be so? Because a non-tumbling electron would have a much larger energy. This is where the quantum bicycle comes in. What would such a tumbling motion (in 4D space-time, of a set of six bi-vector fields) look like? Further, what would such a thing do if one tried to measure it?  

  This is why I say that the electron flow cannot be simply a vector flow in space, such as you illustrate. Although it has some nice features it is not fully consistent with (all of) experiment. 

  Lets go back to kid analogy. Imagine a set of kids in space,  ( roped to one another and wearing space-suits of course) and standing on a Dirac-belt track. The kids can walk forwards or backwards (or stand still) and can aeroplane their hands leftwards or rightwards as they walk. What happens as they do so depends on the mass of the track and the relative rotational inertia of their hands and their masses with respect to the radius of the Dirac Belt. To get closer to reality, lets assume these particular kids are robot kids with very massive hands (and very light bodies) mounted on a spinning disc with axis constrained to lie along the direction which they may walk. THis looks a bit more like the quantum bicycle. Lets go first for a very light track. they start walking. They do not move, but the track moves under their feet. Not  very interesting. Lets give the track a rotational inertial the same as that of the kids. THey start walking. They walk one way and the track counter-rotates. An external observer sees a rotating set of kids and counter-rotating track. Now they walk and spin their arms at a harmonic frequency compatible with the frequency of the whole rotation. To an outside observer in the initial plane of the track the kids at the top appear to rotate hands clockwise, those at the bottom counter-clockwise.  What happens now depends on whether the track supports torsion or not. If not, the kids twist around the track, if so the whole track tumbles. The former is more realistic in that space does not support torsion, but we have not yet included that the kids may have strong, directed electric and magnetic field properties - which will seek to minimise the total energy of the motion. It is this that gives rise to Mobius-like behaviour of certain fields cancelling that is most consistent with the experimental body of evidence for the properties of the electron. It is this internal turn and twist and tumble that one tries to project if one measures the spin.

  Now this is good fun .. but it is not yet quite precise. In reality there is no track- just the flow of momentum in some electromagnetic self-confined mode structure. Further that momentum is not really in any particular space. It is not in any given Lorentz frame. In particular the flow coming towards you is in a frame which is at lightspeed with respect to you, the observer. At the same time (actully not at the same time - whose time?) that moving away is in another light speed frame. These two frames are as different to each other as can be. Pretty much, since Lorentz transformations mix space and time, the space for one is the time for the other and vice-versa. This flow is, therefore, best not modelled in space or time at all. Better: the momentum density E cross B is  constant round the path (though E transforms to B and vice versa as one switches frames). It is in this space (that of the momentum flow) that it makes (more) sense to model things. It is this space to which Martin and I ascribed the flow of the electron - as a photon in the 1997 paper, though others have interpreted it otherwise (probably my fault for not explaining it well enough). In solid state physics we are used to this as one works more often in momentum space (k space) than in normal space - so I suppose workers in this field (like me!) are more likely to think of it like this.

  This may sound overly complicated, but I would argue that it is not. Things are best modelled in that space where they are simple. This is not a simple path is space, it is not a simple spin, but it is a simple single-valued energy and hence frequency. It is a (relatively) simple momentum flow with a great deal of symmetry. It is a simple (radial) electric field distribution. These are our experimental points of reference and we need to stick to them and test our models against them!

  Cheers, John.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  From: John Duffield [johnduffield at btconnect.com]
  Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2015 4:23 PM
  To: John Williamson; Vivian Robinson; Andrew Meulenberg
  Cc: Richard Gauthier; "'doc. Ing. Radomil Matoušek"; A. F. Kracklauer; Adam K; ambroselli at phys.uconn.edu; Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri; Hans De Raedt; David Saint John; Fiona van der Burgt; Jonathan Weaver; Mark, Martin van der; Mayank Drolia; Michael Wright; Nick Green; "prof. Ing. Pavel Ošmera, CSc."; Rachel; Ralph Penland; Robert Hadfield; robert hudgins; Stephen Leary; Timothy Drysdale; wfhagen at gmail.com

  Subject: Re: Photonic electron and spin

  John

  Sorry I haven’t got back to your before now. I think quantum spin is nothing mysterious, the Einstein-de Haas effect demonstrates that spin angular momentum is of the same nature as classical angular momentum. We made an electron out of light, something is going round and round in there, and it ain’t cheese. And like the “quantum bicycle” is doesn’t have to be spinning on one axis only. Walk round in a circle with your arms outstretched like you’re a kid pretending to be a plane, then bank your arms. Only the photon isn’t some kid, it takes many paths, and it has to be moving through itself to displace itself, so you need a crocodile of kids in a double loop to emulate the electron. And even that isn’t good enough, because of something is rotating on two axes it’s isn’t rotating clockwise or anticlockwise, it’s rotating like this:

  . 

  Every which way. But there’s nothing mysterious about it. The mystery is why people say instrinsic spin is not a real rotation, when the hard scientific evidence says it is. 

  As regard field and force, IMHO there’s a big problem with Ex Ey Ez and Bx By Bz. It’s trying to define the field in terms of force, and it doesn’t work because you need two fields to have a force*. It’s missing the very essence of what electrons and positrons are all about, it obscures the surely obvious fact that they’re chiral dynamical spinors in frame-dragged space. Counter-rotating vortices repel. IMHO QED obscures it further by suggesting that electrons and positrons are throwing photons at one another. They aren’t doing this. They are photons. 511keV photons with a toroidal topology. And see this: ”the Lorentz force is Force = qE + J cross B is a product of fields E and B”  There is no field E or B! Those are the forces that result from field interactions. 

  Darn, I have to go. I’ll get back to you some more later. 

  Regards

  John

  * forgetting about the photon self-interaction for a moment

  From: John Williamson 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 9:53 AM
  To: John Duffield ; Vivian Robinson ; Andrew Meulenberg 
  Cc: Richard Gauthier ; "'doc. Ing. Radomil Matoušek" ; A. F. Kracklauer ; Adam K ; ambroselli at phys.uconn.edu ; Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri ; Hans De Raedt ; David Saint John ; Fiona van der Burgt ; Jonathan Weaver ; Mark, Martin van der ; Mayank Drolia ; Michael Wright ; Nick Green ; "prof. Ing. Pavel Ošmera, CSc." ; Rachel ; Ralph Penland ; Robert Hadfield ; robert hudgins ; Stephen Leary ; Timothy Drysdale ; wfhagen at gmail.com 
  Subject: RE: Photonic electron and spin

  Hi Guys,

  Yes I like Viv's model as well, even if it is a little bit flatter (2D) than mine and Martin's (in joke between Viv and myself).

  I think I'd better get a bit pedantic as well as I think we need to not get too loose about what is what is not and, at least agree as to what we are talking about and not mix too many things up, or we will all start getting confused. A force is not a field and a field is not a force.  They are related, but have different character. One can have a force-field, but this is different again (it is a vector of vectors, whereas the electromagnetic field is a differential of a vector of vectors),

  o be more precise, in the usual relativistic formulation, a field is a 4-vector differential (d = [d/dt, -dx,-d/dy,-d/dz]) of a 4-vector potential (A = [At,Ax,Ay,Az]), where I have missed out the unit vectors or covariant indices, but you know what I mean. That means Field=dA (modulo some gauge which I will ignore for the mo). So the field is, strictly a bi-vector quantity (or, more simply, a (traceless antisymmetric) tensor). That is, it is more complicated than a vector. You cannot squeeze the complexity of a field into the (relative) simplicity of a force, any more than you can squeeze the complexity of a (general) vector into the relative simplicity of a scalar, even if there are special examples where this is possible (conservative force fields derivable from a scalar potential), and fields with a great degree of symmetry (described by a gauge constraint with that symmetry). I know there is a lot of elementary text-book level stuff where this is assumed, but that is written by people who do not really understand what the gauge is and what it is for.  

  You can see the difference simply because the field has six components, not four. These are, in some particular frame Ex Ey Ez and Bx By Bz. Although in one frame something may be electric only, in every other inertial frame it will also have magnetic components. Fields in general have six components, and this is certainly true for the electron and more complex particles of the sort we wish to describe. 

  Now a force IS a vector. The question is how is this related to field? Well, if we restrict ourselves to electromagnetic forces then these are products of such things as 4-currents and fields (See Waite 1995 in the paper I just sent you and all the references therein to Einstein's work on FJ). Such products have vector components. So , for example the simple case of the Lorentz force is Force = qE + J cross B is a product of fields E and B and 4- current [q, Jx,Jy,Jz]. That is the Lorentz force is an element of the more general expression FJ or of (setting dF=J in the full set of Maxwell equations) Force = FdF (six component) field tensor times four-derivative of field tensor). In summary force is a (single index) vector quantity, where field is a (two index) tensor or bi-vector quantity.

  Hope this helps,

  John.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  From: John Duffield [johnduffield at btconnect.com]
  Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 9:01 AM
  To: Vivian Robinson; Andrew Meulenberg
  Cc: Richard Gauthier; "'doc. Ing. Radomil Matoušek"; A. F. Kracklauer; Adam K; ambroselli at phys.uconn.edu; Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri; Hans De Raedt; David Saint John; Fiona van der Burgt; John Williamson; Jonathan Weaver; Mark, Martin van der; Mayank Drolia; Michael Wright; Nick Green; "prof. Ing. Pavel Ošmera, CSc."; Rachel; Ralph Penland; Robert Hadfield; robert hudgins; Stephen Leary; Timothy Drysdale; wfhagen at gmail.com
  Subject: Re: Photonic electron and spin

  Andrew:

  Viv’s description sounds pretty good to me. I would urge you to look again at the ball of yarn and the wormhole in time. Time is just a cumulative measure of local motion. 

  Viv/Andrew:

  I’d like to stress that the photon is an electromagnetic field variation, and the electron has an electromagnetic field. The thing we call an electric field isn’t really a field, it’s the linear force that results from electromagnetic field interactions. Sorry to be a pedant about this, but I really do think it’s important.  

  All: 

  I think physics is in a pretty pass when physicists can’t say what a photon is. Or an electron. And IMHO there’s not much point talking about selectrons if you don’t know what an electron is. Or much else for that matter. 

  Regards
  John

  From: Vivian Robinson 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 3:03 AM
  To: Andrew Meulenberg 
  Cc: Richard Gauthier ; "'doc. Ing. Radomil Matoušek" ; A. F. Kracklauer ; Adam K ; ambroselli at phys.uconn.edu ; Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri ; Hans De Raedt ; David Saint John ; Fiona van der Burgt ; John Duffield ; John Williamson ; Jonathan Weaver ; Mark, Martin van der ; Mayank Drolia ; Michael Wright ; Nick Green ; "prof. Ing. Pavel Ošmera, CSc." ; Rachel ; Ralph Penland ; Robert Hadfield ; robert hudgins ; Stephen Leary ; Timothy Drysdale ; wfhagen at gmail.com 
  Subject: Re: Photonic electron and spin

  Dear Andrew and all, 

  I refer to your question below concerning the spin of an electron under this electromagnetic model. I have a slightly different way of looking at problems. I like to think it is from a practical physics viewpoint. (I have had great successes in my career, when the world's "experts" told me my ideas would never work.) My philosophy is to work out the physics involved and then apply the necessary mathematics to check the magnitude of the physical effect. If it matches experiment, that is a good start. Like most in this group I contend that everything is electromagnetic in nature. What some call a toroidal electromagnetic field I call a rotating photon. We know something about photons, but not everything. Features like electric and magnetic fields, polarisation, frequency, wavelength, energy and speed appear to be established and can be treated mathematically. The nature of the electric and magnetic fields and number of cycles in a single photon are not so well established. Most agree that photons have a limited length that makes them behave like a particle. This stresses the importance of conferences like SPIE that can help sort these things out. 

  With that as background I address your concern about the spin of an electron. The following reference should take you directly to a paper I wrote a few years ago on A Proposal for the Structure and Properties of the Electron, to Libertas Academica Press, a journal called Particle Physics Insights. The electron's structure is that of a photon that makes two revolutions in its wavelength. The maths are the same irrespective of whether the photon is one wavelength long or n wavelengths long, where n is a finite number. The rotating photon gives the electron its spin of half hbar and defines why E = mc**2. (I made an error in my determination of the Bohr magneton as Richard rightly pointed out). The Bohr magneton is the electron's charge multiplied by the radius of the rotating photon. Its radius is half the Compton wavelength. This allows the electric and magnetic fields to interlock. It also derives some properties of the electron, like special relativity corrections, de Broglie wavelength, positron is mirror image of electron.

  http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.la-press.com%2Fredirect_file.php%3FfileId%3D3567%26filename%3DPPI-4-Robinson_7102%26fileType%3Dpdf&ei=XrzaVN3yM5LaoASdvIBI&usg=AFQjCNEgMis5p6Np1a0a_LqfbJG-HZMcrw&bvm=bv.85761416,d.cGU

  Figure 12  gives a brief discussion on some properties of the electron's spin. As a rotating photon, an electron is always spinning. It spin depends upon the direction from which it is observed. Its two states of spin are "other side of the page images of the same particle". Spin is quantised because it can only spin one way or the other, with respect to the observer. It is not always possible to tell which way it is spinning until its spin is measured. 

  I hope this helps your understanding.

  Cheers,

  Viv Robinson

  On 10/02/2015, at 2:32 PM, Andrew Meulenberg <mules333 at gmail.com> wrote:

    Dear Richard,

    You answered my request for a reference to your statement  "A non-moving electron’s spin is undefined until it’s measured with respect to something, and even then I think it has to be moving" with: 

       "I think that the standard Copenhagen QM says that any property like spin doesn't exist (or cannot be known) until it's measured. And then the quantity measured (like spin) aligns with its z-component in the direction of some measurement axis." 

    I suspected that the reference would be to a non-physical explanation that reveals a lack of understanding that all of us are trying to correct. I anyone has an actual reference/citation for such a statement, I would appreciate it.

    I am starting a new thread because I hope that this will be a topic of discussion(s) in San Diego. I hope that someone of the group will do the mathematics and present it in their paper since I believe it to be fundamental to the nature of the electron, explains the basis for the deBroglie wavelength, and leads to a better understanding of nuclear particles and physics.

    I will need to describe my picture of the photonic electron to make the point.

    The moebius electron is the proper starting point. However, the photon is not a single-cycle creature. It has been made that way in special cases with an immense amount of work. Nevertheless. it normally may be 100 to 1e7 (or more) cycles long.  Thus, the electron formed from a photon is not just the simple moebius. It is the continuous 'twisted' wrapping of the photon about itself (like a ball of yarn, but with the photon center remaining on a 'surface' with the Compton radius). This is possible because (in one view) light does not interfere with light and can therefore superpose itself and settle to the lowest energy level, which is one with a uniform isotropic E-field out-directed to create the Coulomb potential. The inward -directed field reaches a critical energy density and forms a worm-hole in time that erupts back into space as the positron. One of my papers in San Diego ("The photon to electron/positron-pair transition ") will describe the physical mechanism for this 'rectification' process.

    This mechanism creates the electron-positron pair, with mass and charges, from a photon that has neither. It fits the conservation of energy, momentum (linear, angular, and spin), charge, etc.; but, it means that there may be no electric monopoles. (Actually, I think that the wormhole eventually  breaks down or 'pinches off' and leaves the charges independent.)

    When stationary, the electron is totally isotropic; but, it has angular momentum in all directions. Since the photon is traveling in all directions, at the speed of light, any motion of the electron will put a torque on the photon via forces along the portions that are exceeding light speed. These forces 'compress' the spherical ball in the direction of motion (the Lorentz contraction. The induced shape change gives the electron its characteristic 'spin' along a specific axis. However, the relativistic torque causes the spin axis to precess about  a preferred axis (the velocity vector, if in free space). The deBroglie wavelength is the distance traveled at velocity v  during a single precession cycle. This then is the basis for most of the electron/positron properties and quantization of the atomic-electron orbits.

    Once these things are understood, rather than just expressed mathematically, it becomes possible to properly explore the nature of matter, at the nuclear and sub-nuclear levels, and see that it is all electromagnetic (with some relativistic components, e.g. the neutrino) and begins with the photon.

    Andrew

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
If you no longer wish to receive communication from the Nature of Light and Particles General Discussion List at johnduffield at btconnect.com
<a href="http://lists.natureoflightandparticles.org/options.cgi/general-natureoflightandparticles.org/johnduffield%40btconnect.com?unsub=1&unsubconfirm=1">
Click here to unsubscribe
</a>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.natureoflightandparticles.org/pipermail/general-natureoflightandparticles.org/attachments/20150221/8c5d7d37/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 21892 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.natureoflightandparticles.org/pipermail/general-natureoflightandparticles.org/attachments/20150221/8c5d7d37/attachment-0001.jpeg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 8784 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.natureoflightandparticles.org/pipermail/general-natureoflightandparticles.org/attachments/20150221/8c5d7d37/attachment-0002.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 268185 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.natureoflightandparticles.org/pipermail/general-natureoflightandparticles.org/attachments/20150221/8c5d7d37/attachment-0003.gif>