An invited review: neutron lifetime anomaly and mirror matter theory

It still feels like yesterday. Almost exactly four years ago, also around Chinese New Year, I finished my first paper (or to be exact, two) on the new mirror matter theory. Now I just finished my first invited review paper, which exactly details the original motivations on solving the puzzles of neutron lifetime in my first published paper. It feels like I just completed the circle. So many thanks for Dr. Ben Grinstein’s invitation. I’ve been trying to write a review on mirror matter theory and related experiments and observations for a long time. But it never came through. Ben’s invitation has really pushed me to finish this review paper earlier. It is not the full review paper I have imagined, but still a very important part of it. It focuses on the unique perspectives in the analysis of the neutron lifetime anomaly and the CKM unitarity issue, which have been mostly overlooked by the mainstream. It does not present the full picture and details of mirror matter theory. Instead, it gives the details of the phenomenological $n-n’$ oscillation model, and presents exactly how it can explain the above puzzles and how we can test its unique predictions in laboratory experiments.

Here is the paper: Neutron lifetime anomaly and mirror matter theory

A new milestone paper on mirror matter theory

After procrastinating for almost a year, I finally finished this paper. It is going to be recognized as a new milestone on mirror matter studies. In particular, amazing connections between string theory and new supersymmetric mirror models are established. Mirror symmetry as a fundamental concept is deeply examined. Based on mathematical results from string theory, we can finally put these mirror models on a firmer and self-consistent ground and can really explain an impressive list of puzzles in fundamental physics and cosmology. Without further ado, here it is:

Future of the new mirror matter theory

The new mirror matter theory has only a very rough framework with many of its aspects waiting to be greatly improved and further developed as a nascent research direction. In particular, its mathematical rigor and foundations have yet to be established. Relevant new mathematical tools and approaches are desired to be implemented in the new theory. Theoretical efforts in the past several decades on fundamental physics, especially on topological quantum field theory, string theory, and quantum gravity, need to be merged into the new theoretical framework under the guidance of the newly proposed first principles. Most importantly, the neutral hadron oscillation effects predicted by the new theory are ready to be experimentally tested in laboratory, and it is time for more observation and simulation works in astronomy and cosmology under the consideration of the new theory to be conducted.

As presented below, I’d like to say a few words on the future direction of the new theory to interested mathematicians and physicists.

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New paper on first principles

I just tried to post my new paper of “First Principles of Consistent Physics” on arXiv.org. Unfortunately it was put on hold immediately and I then submitted it to the OSF eprint server. This is quite an exciting paper to me. It proposes new foundations and guiding principles on fundamental physics and cosmology based and improved upon my early blog “first principles of physics“. It should shed new light on further developments of the new mirror framework.

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First principles of physics

The approach of first principles has been pursued in the development and history of physics. Ever since the establishment of the Standard Model of particle physics in 1970s, the idea of going after theory of everything has become popular as the latest approach of first principles among theoretical physicists for unifying all particles and interactions. However, we seem to live in a dynamic world as indicated, e.g., since the discovery of an expanding Universe and it is definitely at odds with the static picture of an ultimate unified theory for physics.

The dynamic picture tells us that the time reversal symmetry has to be broken and it has to be the first (broken) symmetry. Whatever first principles we propose have to be able to naturally break this symmetry first in the very beginning. And there is no reason why the current 4-dimensional spacetime, in particular, its dimensions can’t be dynamic. It is probably more natural to consider that spacetime has evolved in a dimension-by-dimension way.

First of all, we propose and summarize the three first principles as follows:

1. A measurable finite physical world is assumed.
2. The quantum version of the variation principle in terms of Feynman’s path integral formalism is applied.
3. Spacetime emerges via dimensional phase transitions (i.e., first time dimension and then space dimensions got inflated).
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Old Wine in New Bottles – How does science advance?

A lot of times science advances by incorporating or interpreting old ideas under new scenarios.

For example, Lorentz first proposed the so-called Lorentz transformation, but it was Einstein who correctly interpreted and applied it in his theory of special relativity. Yang and Mills first came up with the SU(2) gauge theory idea for studying nuclear isospin. But it was Glashow, Weinberg, Salam , and ‘t Hooft who found the best application of the idea to the electroweak interaction eventually leading to the most celebrated unification theory (called the Standard Model) for all three gauge interactions of the known elementary particles.

Does the Universe Have a Mirror Sector?

[This is a repost of the popular introduction page on the new mirror matter theory]

Modern physics is pillared by Einstein’s theory of general relativity (that defines spacetime and the gravitational force) and the Standard Model as the best known quantum theory (that governs quantum particles and the other known interactions). Despite tremendous successes of the two theories and decades of more scientific efforts, there remains a wide range of puzzling phenomena in fundamental physics and the dream of unification of general relativity and quantum theory has never come true.

Invisible decays and equivalence of CP violation and mirror symmetry breaking scales

COVID-19 pandemic has hindered my scientific production quite a bit. But finally my new paper on “invisible decays of neutral hadrons” is finished though it should have been done months ago. It provides precise predictions on invisible decay branching fractions of long-lived neutral hadrons that can be readily measured at existing collider facilities. The idea is that CP violation can be considered as a direct result of spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking at staged quark condensation (e.g., at temperatures of 100GeV – 100 MeV in the early Universe). For a neutral kaon system, it means that the CP and mirror breaking scales, i.e., the mixing strength and mass splitting parameters should be the same.

How risky or controversial is my work on mirror matter theory?

To demonstrate the risky or controversial aspects of my work on mirror matter theory, I’d like to share more comments extracted from various review reports from the expert physicists when refereeing my work. See here for early comments on my work. Clearly, the controversies are getting escalated on my new work on a dynamical view of the Universe as even relatively open-mined arXiv decided to deny my submission (see here). The list of the following review comments is sort of in the order from positive to negative.

• Example 1:

This subject is a hot topic, and the results are very interesting in light of future experimental measurements for the light quark sector.

No theory of everything

Here is my new paper that provides a dynamic view on theory of everything. Normally arXiv should have it posted online on Feb. 4 but instead has put it on hold for nearly two weeks. So I have to submit it as an OSF preprint and to the archive of “crackpottery”[viXra:2002.0262] since arXiv is probably considering the paper a crackpot. It can also be downloaded from this page with all my papers on mirror matter theory (A persistent link of my mirror papers is also on the side menu). Below is the popular summary of this paper:

No single unification theory of everything. The universe is dynamic and so are the underlying physical models and spacetime. As our 4-d spacetime evolves dimension by dimension in the early universe, consistent yet different models emerge one by one with different sets of particles and interactions. A new set of first principles are proposed for building such models with new understanding of supersymmetry, mirror symmetry, and the dynamic mechanism – spontaneous symmetry breaking. Under this framework, the arrow of time is naturally explained and the Standard Model of physics is elegantly extended to time zero of the universe.