What is going on with EMR.

Michael  Anderson. Bsc (Chem Eng)Cape Town. AMP Harvard.

As an amateur physicist I make no claim to be a great mathematician or have access to enormous facilities, but I do have a long and consuming interest in particle Physics. I have studied this subject from many angles with an accent more on the “how” than the “what”. This study has led me to answer some of my own questions and some of those answers, I believe, are unique and revealing. In this paper I try to explain my thoughts and give you, the reader, I hope some serious food for thought and perhaps encouragement to use these ideas in some further research.

I began my journey of exploration when I tried to understand the “how” of Einstein’s famous E=mc² equation. It was clear to me that this meant that matter and energy are precisely the same thing, that no matter can exist unless it is structured out of particles of energy. As simple as this fact is, it is hard to accept but accept it we must. It means that energy and mass are two forms of the same thing. Taken another way, perhaps we should say of elementary particles that they are indivisible particles of energy which appear and act as matter with the property of mass.

To begin to understand the implications of this concept we need to begin with the simplest and purest form of energy, Electromagnetic Radiation or EMR.

 In 1850 Maxwell famously described EMR waves as oscillation of electric and magnetic fields.  Now  an electric field  is defined as “an electric property associated with each point in the space where a single or many charge/s is/are present” and an oscillation of that charge means the charge swings back and forth from positive to negative. We also know that magnetism exists only when a moving or changing charge is present. So the picture in all the textbooks show EMR as an single electric wave oscillating while at right angles to it is the magnetic wave swings polarity in phase with it.

However, there is a problem with EMR. We know from work by Einstein and others it has both “wave” and “particle” characteristics. The exact mechanism of the transmission of these waves is not fully understood but the evidence that they are “quantized” is irrefutable. The individual quanta do not appear to be linked to each other as many lab experiments with very low intensity radiation have demonstrated the reception of individual quanta of energy as have observations of distant astronomic objects arriving on occasions spaced apart by seconds or even longer. They have also shown irrefutably that those quanta of energy are of a unique magnitude linked specifically to the frequency of the wave with the energy growing larger as the frequency is higher.

That is what happens, my question is “how”.

The only variables affecting  energy in this picture are frequency and the electric field, and the only variable in the latter can be the density (or size) of charge in that field, so we have to conclude that it is that density which is the driver which causes the frequency to rise, and must also be the driver for increasing the energy. In other words, if the density (or size) of charge in the electric field density grows, the frequency grows and the energy grows.

Because we really don’t know what a “charge” is, it is not possible to determine the size or number of individual charges that make up the “density” of the electric field that oscillates, and we certainly don’t know how many charges of what size makes up the total charge of a single quantum. However, if we want to really understand what is going on we need to bring it all down to that individual quantum where it must mean that it is the oscillation of a single charge or small group of charges that equal the size of that charge and the resulting magnetic effects that oscillation must cause to sustain the quantum on its travels.

To further understand this question, lets look at the point we know that energy and matter are equivalent, the “creation” of an electron positron pair. In our natural world the simplest form of matter is an electron and it’s charge mate a positron. We know that these particles can also act as waves and indeed can experimentally be shown to be able to switch backwards and forwards between the two forms. High energy gamma waves under the right circumstances spark off an electron positron pair and if these entities recollide they disappear again and release gamma rays of equal total energy. This fact is a clear confirmation of the equivalence of the two forms of energy.

To look in some more detail at the process of conversion of high energy gamma rays into electron positron pair we find there is nothing new in this information, it is available from many sources. Gamma rays are high frequency high energy electromagnetic radiation (EMR). Clearly to produce a pair of particles, the energy of the gamma rays must be greater than the sum of the energies of the two particles. We know the rest energy of each of an electron and a positron is 0.511 MeV so the energy of the Gamma rays must be greater than 1.022 MeV from which we can deduce will have an frequency of greater than 2.47x10²⁰Hz. If such a ray were to pass close to a nucleus a pair of particles a positron and an electron are sparked off. If the two were to subsequently collide they would reverse the process and produce two identical gamma rays of total energy equal to 1.022 MeV confirming that the energy of the gamma ray has indeed been converted into these two particles of matter and converted back again into the originating gamma radiation, but of necessity, each half the energy and frequency.

In the previous paragraph I used the word Converted. Perhaps if we used the word Transformed it would make it more clear that the two particles are still quanta of energy, now in the form of matter with the property of mass. In EMR it is clearly energy, in Matter it still in energy in the form of matter. Taking this view, it makes nonsense of the controversy as to whether a photon has mass. The word “photon” is simply an easy way of describing a “quantum of EMR” and as such it is energy which is at the same time mass in alternative form.

It Is interesting to note that the transformation described above is always precisely into a positron and an electron, it is never either two positrons or two electrons or indeed any other elementary “particle”. The other interesting fact is that the two appear together not one after another. In fact, the conversion must be instantaneous, so if the quantum contained a multitude of charges that all swung back and forth in unison from positive to negative, then at the instant of conversion all the charges in the quantum must be one or the other and the production of both a particle with a positive charge and one with a negative charge would not be possible: it would have to be one or the other! This must mean that the positive side of the EMR wave must exist concurrently with the negative side meaning that EMR actually hac a poositive wave coexisting and in phase with a negative wave.

This new model allows the charges to be always in balance, an equal number of positive charges as there are negative charges. As stated earlier, we don’t know if the charge of a quantum of EMR is a single point charge or a group of lesser charges that total to the magnitude of charge required, but logic would suggest that it is probably the former. Consider sunlight for example, it is made up of radiation of all frequencies and energies from low energy infra red through visible light to the ultra violet range and beyond, and yet individual quanta applicable toeach and all those energies and frequencies coexist without interference. If the quanta were to be created by multiple charges as opposed to a single point charge, it would be impossible to separate one quantum from another in the stream. This strongly suggests that the actual mechanism is that each quantum of each individual frequency of the EMR is indeed a single matching pair of a positive and negative charge which remain linked. Indeed it may be that that is the reason for the quantization of EMR. Each point charge pair defines a quantum.

To further justify the model of a quantum of EMR, consider this. Imagine the bunch of charges in the quantum as a single pair of    positive and negative charges. As the quantum of energy passes a single point in space this pair emerges driven apart by the energy of the wave. Assuming they start off at a fixed velocity, they would be attracted back together by the attractive force of their positive and negative nature and clearly, the bigger those charges were the greater the attraction and the swifter they would again meet, causing the higher frequency.

 Exactly what happens in the process is still not at all clear but the net effect is that if the energy and frequency (and by deduction, charge) of a quantum of EMR is greater than the level of 1.022MeV then certain circumstances can cause the spinning off of the negative half of the electric field to form the electron while the spinning off of the positive half forms the positron.  

The conclusion I make from all this is that every EMR energy wave has three significant variables namely energy, frequency, and charge and these three variables are related and unique to each combination.

An equally important conclusion is that the relationship in the EMR “wave” which is related  to the spawned “particles” is the same, that is the energy, frequency and charge of the wave and particle from which it spawned are identical. If that unique relationship is not present in a particle, one must conclude that the particle is not elementary and must be a combination of particles that do meet that criteria, because, very simply, there is no way they can form unless they do.

In the case of EMR it is not easy to determine the exact value of the charge of a quantum but we have a secret weapon. It is the very same above described conversion of EMR into a electron pair because we do know the exact charge of an electron and the energy of that particle and by interpretation the frequency of the wave of which it is a part. We just need to understand how to use this information.

So, neither EMR nor an elementary particle can have any other property than frequency and charge which can affect its energy, and therefore it’s mass. In other words, if a wave has frequency omega, energy E, and charge q, then it can be described by the following expression: E is increased as the frequency increases because q increases. (Note There is some math here which Blogger did not reproduce so I had to take it out. Also the figures I prepared did not reproduce. I am trying to sort this out.) 

To determine the nature of those functions we go first the famous Feynman equation² which finds that the energy of an electron is given by a function which squares the charge.

In my own work I derived an expression of similar form but with different constants³, but it too related the energy E to the square of q. We also know that the relationship between E and omegaE is given by Planck’s equation⁴ as  E=h.frequency. 

The sequence of math leads to an expression which raiys that the raio of energies in EMR is equal to the ratios of the sqare roots of charge

Because of the equivalence of energy and mass, this expression is valid for EMR and for elementary particles of matter.

From this expression it is easy to see that the charge in a quantum is not doubled when the energy is twice as great, reinforcing the suggestion that the magnitude of charge is simply a manifestation of the total energy of the quantum and cannot be defined by addition of a number of smaller charges. Indeed, it suggests that charge itself is a property of a unique quantum of energy.

Another key conclusion this expression leads to is that it is impossible to differentiate between the energy related to a positive charge and that related to a negative charge, which while unsurprising in a mathematical context but may be critical in understanding the structure of matter. The energy and mass in a positron is in every way identical to the energy and mass in an electron albeit their opposite charges.

So a positron is not Anti-matter, it is simply matter transformed from the energy of a positive charge as an electron is matter transformed from the energy of a negative charge. And perhaps this is why we don’t know where all the anti-matter in the universe is, because it is hiding in common sight in all matter, and we cannot tell which is which. Perhaps we need to understand how negative charged matter particles can coexist with positive charged matter particles to find the answer, and perhaps the neutrino is that solution.

 

References

1. From the Big Bang to Quarks – Have we lost our way. Michael Anderon Vantage Press, 1996.

2. Feynman Lectures. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_28.html

3. Planck’s law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_law