[General] position: Electron, a photon with toroidal topology?

[John Williamson]

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for that.

No - I think the old paper still stands as far as it goes - and I am pretty proud of it. I think Martin and I were on the right track from the beginning (we submitted the first draft in 1991 and a couple of short conference papers on it in 1994 - they are fine too).

As to developments - well an email is a bit short to summarise 20 years of full-time work but here goes ...

Yes - lots has developed. The old paper is semi-classical. It simply assumes that there exists a confinement mechanism. It speculates about what this might be but goes no further. This is true of many of the current models in our group. They just have light going round and round in circles all by itself. Some have presented vague notions such as "pressure" but with no proper equations describing it such the central force law for the Schrodinger solution of the hydrogen atom, for example. The problem is that, and the reason that we all have not been taken very seriously up till now is that, experimentally, light does not do that!

What Martin and I have been concentrating on is developing the theory of electromagnetism into a theory capable of describing the self-confinement of electromagnetism into all the other particles in the zoo. A paper on this theme is the one I posted to you from the Marseille conference last year. It has a force for photon-self-confinement. Look at it!

Martin is taking a different approach to mine at the moment extending Batemans's method and putting some of the work also pursued by others on knotted light (including the group at Glasgow university), onto a more sound theoretical basis. As is often the case with us, it turns out that our ideas are tending to converge on this as both approaches give insight into different aspects of what may eventually be required in a more complete (classical) theory of electromagnetism.

In the intervening time Martin and I have done much work on forces and force equations in electromagnetism. These equations are rather complex. They are non-linear coupled differential equations with, literally, hundreds of terms. Even with our energy, we have simply run out of steam on these. This is what I talked about at CYBCON in 2008, for example - and there is a paper on the website there.

Much of the underlying work has concentrated on understanding the consequences of the space-time algebraic approach first championed by David Hestenes (and mentioned in another strand here by David Mathes). In other words how space and time themselves condition reality and lead to many aspects of that which is observed in experiment. This is in conjunction with an extension and development of some of Dirac's work - not only on the Dirac equation and its developments but also on some later work of his (in the fifties!) on deriving charge from a development of the concept of gauge.

There is lots more - as I said far too much for a short email.

Will mention a few other things though. One strand has been the developent of models of hadrons - baryons and leptons. This is largely based on some very old ideas of mine I developed when working at CERN in the eighties. Martin and I developed a toy theory of Gravity - based on the idea that gravity is just another aspect of electromagnetism- which comes out with a purely attractive force with the right magnitude. In contrast to John M's work, however, this requires precisely that the energy density of space-time is severely limited and is only significant near to existing particles - as is observed. I have looked at conformal methods in field theory - with a view to understanding the nature of quantum "collapse" of the wave-function. I have talked about this but not written anything substantial. I have a paper on a possible origin of the exclusion principle - based on field interference - and its relation to the strong force. This notion is backed strongly by experiment, as it is the only thing I know about that explains such things as the spin puzzle for baryons (O' Fallon and Krisch in the seventies and eighties) and the EMC effect in the eighties (I was involved myself in this work and you will find my name on the papers).

That's it. All we have been doing is trying to develop a proper field theory that describes all of experiment. Just and no more.

Regards, John W.

P.S  just tried posting this but it was "held for moderation"  ... so you may get this message twice - for which my apologies.
________________________________
From: General [general-bounces+john.williamson=glasgow.ac.uk at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org] on behalf of Andrew Meulenberg [mules333 at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2015 5:53 AM
To: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion
Subject: [General] position: Electron, a photon with toroidal topology?

Dear John W. & Martin,

I just finished rereading your '97 paper. It is excellent and I agree with most of it. After your response to the question below, I would raise questions about a few points.

The paper reflects your thinking at the time that is now nearly 20 years old. Do you have areas for which you have significantly altered your views from that in the paper? If so, could you please enumerate them? They might be worth a brief paper to the same journal. This update could be a lead- in for the original paper to be used as a 'platform' on which to base a number of papers. It might become the basis of the 'cascade' of publications needed to bring this this topic to the forefront of physics.

Were there any published responses to the '97 paper or citations to it? You have mentioned other people who have similar ideas or backgrounds that would be useful to include. It would be worthwhile giving them the opportunity to join the group, or at least be aware of our activity in the area. If you know them personally it would be easy to invite them.

If things grow the way I expect, there may be a need for the Nature of Light conference to become an annual affair as we extend photonic-particle physics beyond the electron. Of course, Chandra will need more help to pull that off. Alternatively, or in addition, we might even need to have a session on the topic included in one of the physics (or SPIE) conferences in Europe.

Andrew
________________________________
From: General [general-bounces+john.williamson=glasgow.ac.uk at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org] on behalf of Andrew Meulenberg [mules333 at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2015 5:53 AM
To: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion
Subject: [General] position: Electron, a photon with toroidal topology?

Dear John W. & Martin,

I just finished rereading your '97 paper. It is excellent and I agree with most of it. After your response to the question below, I would raise questions about a few points.

The paper reflects your thinking at the time that is now nearly 20 years old. Do you have areas for which you have significantly altered your views from that in the paper? If so, could you please enumerate them? They might be worth a brief paper to the same journal. This update could be a lead- in for the original paper to be used as a 'platform' on which to base a number of papers. It might become the basis of the 'cascade' of publications needed to bring this this topic to the forefront of physics.

Were there any published responses to the '97 paper or citations to it? You have mentioned other people who have similar ideas or backgrounds that would be useful to include. It would be worthwhile giving them the opportunity to join the group, or at least be aware of our activity in the area. If you know them personally it would be easy to invite them.

If things grow the way I expect, there may be a need for the Nature of Light conference to become an annual affair as we extend photonic-particle physics beyond the electron. Of course, Chandra will need more help to pull that off. Alternatively, or in addition, we might even need to have a session on the topic included in one of the physics (or SPIE) conferences in Europe.

Andrew
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