Re: Broken SUSY

Posted by DickT on July 03, 2002 at 20:28:27:

In Reply to: Re: Broken SUSY posted by dlgoff on July 03, 2002 at 18:33:37:

Don,

It's called the running coupling factor^*, and it was originally discovered by Gell-Mann and Low in the Early 1950s (in connection with early QED). For every force there is a number, the coupling constant, that fixes the strength scale for the force. For electromagnetism the coupling constant is the famous fine structure constant of specroscopy, about 1/137. For gravitation the constant is Newton's G constant, and so forth.

Now if you bring the modern Renormalization Group multiple rescaling to bear on chromodynamics (the theory of gluons and quarks), because the gluons are charged, and there are just the right number of fermions (quarks), an equation appears which has the coupling coefficient for the force as a variable. The "constant" actually varies, and it turns out that it becomes weak at short distances and high momenta. This is known as Infra-red Freedom, or Asymptotic freedom. When gluons are close together, or quarks, the force between them is very weak, but as they move apart, the force grows to great strength. Just backwards from the forces we know and love.

I don't know if they have actually worked out the theory of quark confinement yet, but the backward force will certainly have a part to play.

Regards,
Dick

^*Actually running coupling constant, but that's rather silly under the circumstnces.

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