Friday, June 28, 2019

Another argument that time-advanced fields cause opposite forces

I put an update of my paper on Researchgate that has a couple of changes compared to the arxiv v14 version from a couple of days ago.

The most important bit is an additional argument for why the sign of the Lorentz force must invert when an advanced EM field acts on a charge, as viewed in the ordinary forward-time reference frame. The argument in v14 is based on Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory, and is slightly complicated.  A more direct argument based on essentially the same equations is that when two charges are interacting electromagnetically, the interacting part of the retarded field of one charge is the interacting part of the advanced field of  the other charge.  If the field is regarded as retarded, then standard Maxwell-Lorentz electrodynamics applies and so everything is completely defined about the retarded description of the interaction. Also, the form of the advanced field is completely determined in standard theory.  Since the retarded or advanced descriptions are really two different descriptions of the same interaction, they need to be consistent. The result I obtained is that the Lorentz force must be sign inverted in the advanced interaction if the two descriptions are to agree.

I am now planning on using the stuff in section II of the linked paper to make a new, shorter, paper and submit it maybe to a Physical Review journal, maybe as a comment on Schild's paper that seems to have assumed the usual Lorentz force for the advanced force.  (This is necessary if the Coulomb force is to be preserved in a time-symmetric interaction, but in my paper, the magnetic interaction substitutes for Coulomb binding, and so a Coulomb force is redundant for atom formation.) 

I also fixed a couple of inconsequential errors.  Equation (29) of arxiv v14 is correct on the third line but the first two were not exactly right.  It was a copy of another similar equation that didn't get fully edited for v14.  It's Equation (30) in the today (28 June) version.

The other change is to Eq. (48) of v14 (Eq (50) of June 28) and onward, where I hadn't yet gotten around to accounting for the sign change on the advanced part of the time-symmetric magnetic interaction.  It doesn't make any significant difference, though, as adding or subtracting two sinusoids is only ultimately a phase difference.



Sunday, June 23, 2019

I have submitted a corrected replacement for arXiv:0619.04446v13

As I mentioned in my previous post, https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.04446v13 has a fatal sign error in Section IIB that seems to negate the assertion of the paper that time-advanced electromagnetic fields cause forces that are of opposite sign to the Lorentz force in retarded fields.  However, I believe I have recovered the original assertion in spite of the sign error, and have uploaded a new version that explains how.  The new version won't post on arxiv until Tuesday morning, but I placed the arxiv submittal pdf on Academia https://www.academia.edu/36766974/Spin-Spin_Coupling_as_the_Origin_of_Atomic_Binding_revised_23_June_2019_arXiv_v14_ and ResearchGate. 

So, v13 had a sign error that caused a result that electrodynamics must be anti-symmetric under sign inversion rather than symmetric as is widely (correctly) believed.  (The new version, which will be v14 when it appears, has a corrected section IIB which obtains the correct result.)  After going through the corrections, and thinking about it for a couple of days, I realized that symmetry under time inversion is not the applicable condition to apply to the question of what is the sign of the Lorentz for a forward-time observer of a charge in an advanced EM field. Time-symmetry means that the Lorentz force is invariant to inversion of the time coordinate, but this only says the the retarded force in the forward time frame has to be identical with the advanced force in the time-reversed frame.  It doesn't say what the time-advanced force has to be in the forward-time frame, and nobody knows what the retarded force is in the time-reversed frame.  But, the sign of the advanced force in the forward time frame can be got at by looking at the phase of an advanced wave returning to an oscillating charge from a charge re-radiating due to the retarded field of the oscillating charge. Wheeler and Feynman first recognized that if the outgoing retarded wave is absorbed, then the advanced wave will cause an opposing force that can be equated with the radiation damping force.  What I did was consider a non-absorbing charge (with no damping applied) and show that it will create the opposing force if the Lorentz force is assumed for the advanced interaction.  This is a contradiction with known physics, so the advanced wave must cause a force that is opposite the retarded Lorentz force.

When this link https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.04446 says v14 it will be the revised version, but that won't be until at least Tuesday morning GMT. 

Sunday, June 16, 2019

I am withdrawing arxiv:1609.04446v13


There is a sign error that invalidates section IIB of my paper https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.04446v13, "Spin-Spin Coupling as the Origin of Atomic Binding," and so it is retracted. The previous version, https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.04446v12, "Spin-Spin Interaction as Quantum Phase Measurement and the Mechanism of Atom Formation," did not have this section or problem and so still stands.

I noticed the error for the first time a couple of hours ago.

It will be a little while until I replace v13 with a new version that corrects the error.  I'm going to first spend some time trying to recover the claim of v13 that the Lorentz force must change sign in going from retarded to advanced electrodynamic forces. I am still convinced this has to be the case. It is the lesson of Bohm's theory. I have a line of reasoning which may provide a compelling argument in (I hope) fairly short order.  If it doesn't work out within a few weeks I will make a new version that formally retracts section IIB of v13 without replacing it with a new argument.