I received a rejection letter from Foundations of Physics (FOOP) on 3 October 2017, of my paper, "Composite Photon Energy-Frequency Relation." The paper essentially as submitted is posted on researchgate. I have put a slightly revised version (narrative changes only) on arxiv (it's version 8 because the larger paper it was excerpted from is versions 1 through 7) here.
I initially thought there were comments from two reviewers, but the other comments are clearly about a different paper than mine, as the spelling errors called out are not in my paper (nor are the words that were mispelled). On closer inspection however I now think the other comments are from the same reviewer but about two other papers under review, one for FOOP and another for Annals of Physics.
I will reply in detail to Reviewer 1 comments that are clearly about my paper. At the bottom I will post the other comments but not reply.
Referee’s Report
Title: Composite Photon Energy-Frequency Relation
Author: David C. Lush
Manuscript Number: FOOP-D-17-00320
COMMENTS TO THE AUTHOR:
Reviewer #1: Within a purely semiclassical approach the paper deals with the hypothesis that the photon be massive and composed by two circulating particles endowed with opposite charges. No exact evaluation for mass and charge of such circulating particles is given. In the manuscript it is also argued that this composite photon is not the quantum of the free electromagnetic field; nevertheless, a pair of such photons constitutes a single quantum of the black body radiation. One of the physical consequences of that theory is a modified Heisenberg-Schrödinger equation with a reduced Planck constant h/2.
As a matter of fact, all the previous assumptions do not agree with the experimental evidence and also undergo severe theoretical troubles and inconsistencies. Moreover the paper, which also needs a lot of editing with respect to style, syntax and scientific notation, is not sufficiently clear but is often obscure and meaningless, with lack of formal and algebraic accuracy.
Consequently, in my opinion, this paper is not suitable for publication in Foundations of Physics.(End of Reviewer 1 comments on my paper.) My response:
I have no issue with the statement of the first sentence of the Reviewer 1 comment. The second sentence,
"No exact evaluation for mass and charge of such circulating particles is given."is also strictly correct. That is, I didn't attempt to evaluate the mass or charge of the constituent particles (although the charge magnitude is defined in the preon/rishon model I cited as 1/3 the electron charge, as needed to build up the observed charge magnitudes of electrons and quarks). The masses of the preons are indeterminate in the preon/rishon model. But, as my paper shows, there is no need to know the photon constituents' masses in order to determine the composite photon energy frequency relationship. For the model of my paper, the energy-to-frequency relationship is also independent the photon rest mass. Thus, although experiments have set a very small upper limit for a photon rest mass, provided it is nonzero, the composite photon with charged constituents and a fixed rest frame charge circulation frequency will have the energy-frequency relation as developed in the paper.
Reviewer 1 continues:
