Particle model from quantum foundations

Abstract

Some ideas are explored concerning the structure of elementary particles (specifically, leptons and hadrons), formulated within the context of a theory of the objective collapse of the wavefunction recently proposed by the authors. In accordance with this hypothesis, to each interaction that induces a discontinuity (quantum jump) in the evolution of the state of an elementary particle, two de Sitter half-spaces are associated, respectively, connected with the outgoing state and its conjugate. It is in these spaces that the structural constituents of the particle lie (quarks in the case of a hadron). The mass of free particles (leptons and hadrons) is given by the energy associated with their time localization in the jump, while the interaction between quarks belonging to a same hadron leads to a chromodynamic coupling constant that ensures both confinement and asymptotic freedom. It is possible to write a toy Hamiltonian in which the organization of quarks in hadrons appears ab initio, and which includes terms both for the exchange of quarks and for the creation/annihilation of pairs, thus avoiding the problem of bottom-up hadronization. In this scenario, the genesis of Regge trajectories is briefly discussed and it is argued that their slope can be quantized; finally, a reinterpretation is suggested of the classical Veneziano and Virasoro amplitudes.