Considerable progress in generalized Feynman diagrammatics

The following is expanded and somewhat edited response in Kea's blog. For reasons that should become obvious the response deserves to be published also here although I have done this implicitly via links to pdf files in earlier postings. My sincere hope is that at least single really intelligent reader might realize what is is involved;-). This might be enough.

I have been working with twistor program inspired ideas in TGD framework for a couple of years. The basic conceptual elements are following.

1. The notion of generalized Feyman diagram defined by replacing lines of ordinary Feynman diagram with light-like 3-surfaces (elementary particle sized wormhole contacts with throats carrying quantum numbers) and vertices identified as their 2-D ends - I call them partonic 2-surfaces. Speaking somewhat loosely, generalized Feynman diagrams plus background space-time sheets define the "world of classical worlds" (WCW).

2. Zero energy ontology (ZEO) and causal diamonds (intersections of future and past directed lightcones). The crucial observation is that in ZEO it is possible to identify off mass shell particles as pairs of on mass shell particles at throats of wormhole contact since both positive and negative signs of energy are possible. The propagator defined by modified Dirac action does not diverge (except for incoming lines) although the fermions at throats are on mass shell. In other words, the generalized eigenvalue of the modified Dirac operator containing a term linear in momentum is non-vanishing and propagator reduces to G=i/λγ , where γ is modified gamma matrix in the direction of stringy coordinate. This means opening of the black box of off mass shell particle-something which for some reason has not occurred to anyone fighting with the divergences of QFTs.

3. Representation of 8-D gamma matrices in terms of octonionic units and 2-D sigma matrices. Modified gamma matrices at space-time surfaces are quaternionic/associative and allow a genuine matrix representation. As a matter fact, TGD and WCW can be formulated as study of associative local sub-algebras of the local Clifford algebra of 8-D imbedding space parameterized by quaternionic space-time surfaces. Central conjecture is that quaternionic 4-surfaces correspond to preferred extremals of Kähler action identified as critical ones (second variation of Kähler action vanishes for infinite number of deformations defining super-conformal algebra) and allow a slicing to string worldsheets parametrized by points of partonic 2-surfaces.

4. Number theoretic universality requiring the existence of Feynman amplitudes in all number fields when one allows suitable algebraic extensions: roots of unity are certainly required in order to realize plane waves. Also imbedding space, partonic 2-surfaces and WCW must exist in all number fields and their extensions. These constraints are enormously powerful and the attempts to realize this vision have dominated quantum TGD for last 20 years.

5. As far as twistors are considered, the first key element is the reduction of the octonionic twistor structure to quaternionic one at space-time surfaces and giving effectively 4-D spinor and twistor structure for quaternionic surfaces.

Quite recently quite a dramatic progress took place in this approach. It was just the simple observation -I should have made if for already half year ago!- that on mass shell property puts enormously strong kinematic restrictions on the loop integrations. With mild restrictions on the number of parallel fermion lines appearing in vertices (there can be several since fermionic oscillator operator algebra defining SUSY algebra generates the parton states)- all loops are manifestly finite and if particles has always mass -say small p-adic thermal mass also in case of massless particles and due to IR cutoff due to the presence largest CD- the number of diagrams is finite. Unitarity reduces to Cutkosky rules automatically satisfied as in the case of ordinary Feynman diagrams.

This is about momentum space aspects of Feynman diagrams but not yet about the functional (not path-) integral over small deformations of the partonic 2-surfaces. It took some time to see that also the functional integrals over WCW can be carried out at general level both in real and p-adic context.

1. The p-adic generalization of Fourier analysis allows to algebraize integration- the horrible looking technical challenge of p-adic physics- for symmetric spaces for functions allowing the analog of discrete Fourier decomposion. Symmetric space property is indeed essential also for the existence of Kähler geometry for infinite-D spaces as was learned already from the case of loop spaces. Plane waves and exponential functions expressible as roots of unity and powers of p multiplied by the direct analogs of corresponding exponent functions are the basic building bricks and key functions in harmonic analysis in symmetric spaces. The physically unavoidable finite measurement resolution corresponds to algebraically unavoidable finite algebraic dimension of algebraic extension of p-adics (at least some roots of unity are needed). The cutoff in roots of unity is very reminiscent to that occurring for the representations of quantum groups and is certainly very closely related to these as also to the inclusions of hyper-finite factors of type II₁ defining the finite measurement resolution.

2. WCW geometrization reduces to that for a single line of the generalized Feynman diagram defining the basic building brick for WCW. Kähler function decomposes to a sum of "kinetic" terms associated with its ends and interaction term associated with the line itself. p-Adicization boils down to the condition that Kähler function, matrix elements of Kähler form, WCW Hamiltonians and their super counterparts, are rational functions of complex WCW coordinates just as they are for those symmetric spaces that I know of. This allows straightforward continuation to p-adic context. Incredibly simple!
3. As far as diagrams are considered, everything is manifestly finite as the general arguments (non-locality of Kähler function as functional of 3-surface) developed two decades ago indeed allow to expect. General conditions on the holomorphy properties of the generalized eigenvalues λ of the modified Dirac operator can be deduced from the conditions that propagator decomposes to a sum of products of harmonics associated with the ends of the line and that similar decomposition takes place for exponent of Kähler action identified as Dirac determinant. This guarantees that the convolutions of propagators and vertices give rise to products of harmonic functions which can be Glebsch-Gordanized to harmonics and only the singlet contributes to the WCW integral in given vertex. The still unproven central conjecture is that Dirac determinant equals the exponent of Kähler function.

Ironically, twistors which stimulated all these development do not seem to be absolutely necessary in this approach although they are of course possible. Situation changes if one does not assumes small p-adically thermal mass due to the presence of massless particles and one must sum infinite number of diagrams. Here a potential problem is whether the infinite sum respects the algebraic extension in question.

For a more detailed representation see the short articles Weak form of electric-magnetic duality, electroweak massivation, and color confinement and How to define generalized Feynman diagrams?. See also the chapter The Geometry of the World of Classical Worlds.