Elementary particles, the concept of mass, and emergent spacetime

Abstract

It is argued that the problem of space quantization should be considered in close connection with the problem of mass quantization. First, the nonlocality of quantum physics suggests that if spacetime emerges from the underlying quantum layer, this emergence should occur simultaneously at all distance and momentum scales, and not just at the Planck scale. Second, the spectrum of elementary particles provides us with a lot of important information, experimentally inaccessible at the Planck scale, that could be crucial in unravelling the mechanism of emergence. Accordingly, we start with a brief review of some fundamental issues appearing both in the spectroscopy of excited baryons and in connection with the concept of quark mass. It is pointed out that experiment suggests the inadequacy of the description of baryonic interior in terms of ordinary spacetime background. Thus, it is argued that one should be able to learn about the emergence of space from the studies of the quark/hadron transition. The problem of mass is then discussed from the point of view of nonrelativistic phase space and its Clifford algebra, which proved promising in the past. Connection with the Harari-Shupe explanation of the pattern of a single Standard Model generation is briefly reviewed and a proposal for the reintroduction of relativistic covariance into the phase-space scheme is presented.