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. 

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.

New Versions of Three of My Papers

In December I realized I didn't fully describe the zitterbewegung phase of the moving test particle in my Foundations of Physics paper that was published in 2016.  I treated it as pure time dilation, simply dividing time by the Lorentz factor, when I should have done it as a Lorentz transformation, which changes the division to a multiplication and adds an additional term that involves the position and momentum.  So I have made a revision and placed it on arxiv here.

The correction did not negate the conclusions of the paper as published, but it greatly improved the outcome of follow-on work I'd been doing. With the proper treatment of the test zitter particle phase, I was able to obtain for the first time that one factor of the modulation of the radial Coulomb-like magnetic force between zitter particles with aligned spins satisfies a partial differential equation that is quite similar to the time-independent Schroedinger equation.  Essentially, it differs only by factors of four on the potential energy and the energy eigenvalue.  These factors originate in the electron being a spin-half particle, and so it is something of a mystery how de Broglie's reasoning based on the photon led to a correct result. I was actually expecting the energy to be off by a factor of two based on the photon-electron spin difference and on my analysis of the photon as a composite particle, which gives the energy-frequency relation of half the usual. (I have also recently updated that paper, although it turned out to not be directly affected, see here.)

I was very happy to have finally gotten my follow-on to the FOOP paper to arrive at something close to the desired result, but also frustrated that it wasn't as I anticipated.  I spent several weeks staring at it and trying to find a mistake or way around it, but was getting nowhere.  Then, I happened to get an email from a journal requesting submissions that I was not familiar with, so I looked at their latest issue (which is open access) and saw a paper by Osiak that seemed interesting, so I downloaded it. Osiak derives (in part) that the mass-energy equivalency is properly E = mc^2/2 rather than E=mc^2 as  currently accepted.  His argument seemed plausible enough, and since the de Broglie and zitterbewegung frequencies both originate from the equivalency and the spin magnitude, I decided to try using it in my analysis instead of the usual.  It only took a little while to get that the Coulomb-like magnetic force modulation factor satisfies the time-independent Schroedinger equation based on the Osiak form. 

My updated follow-on to the FOOP paper that uses the corrected zitterbewegung phase for a moving particle and has two subsections (IV. d and e) using the Osiak mass-energy equivalency is here:     https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.04446v12.       

My Response to Reviewer #1

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:

The Utility of the Composite Photon

I suppose that the hypothesis of my paper, that the observed frequency of a photon is the frequency of classical electromagnetic fields resulting from the motion of its charged constituents, is perceived as self-contradictory by most physicists.  If the photon is by definition the sole constituent of the electromagnetic field, as a couple of generations of physicists have been taught, then it is not possible that it can itself be a source of electromagnetic fields.  Yet this hypothesis makes possible the derivation of a photon energy-frequency relationship that is arguably more correct than the standard relation proposed by Einstein, as it provides a resolution of the spin-orbit coupling anomaly more plausible than invocation of Thomas precession. (And recognizing that the Thomas precession as a kinematic effect cannot modify energy levels, it becomes possible to recognize it as accounting for the magnetic force and its effects, including previously-unrecognized magnetic binding of charged particles, that occurs irrespective of relative charge polarity.)

However perhaps the greatest explanatory utility of a photon with an electromagnetic structure, and whose interactions are describable through classical electrodynamics, is that it can allow electromagnetism and particularly the magnetic force to account for the so-called wave character of matter, without conflict with quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory generally.  A composite photon with an electromagnetic structure, interacting with charged matter in accordance with classical electrodynamics, obviates the need to postulate a non-classical wave character of matter, which has been shown by Bohm equivalent to postulating a new force that is of magnitude similar and sometimes equal to the Lorentz force.  Why invent a new force when a known force can plausibly do the job?       

   

Did I Make Algebra Errors?

I don't believe I did, but that's what the Foundations of Physics reviewer said about my photon paper (now posted on arxiv, with only narrative changes compared to the FOOP submittal here: Composite Photon Energy-Frequency Relation).   But said reviewer didn't say anything specific about what the alleged errors are.  I am extremely disappointed with FOOP for passing this off as an actual review.  They apparently cannot be bothered to take a position on whether the composite massive photon does indeed have a derivable energy-frequency relationship that is consistent with the Planck law, when it is taken into account that two photons are needed to constitute a standing-wave mode as used by Planck in developing the first correct blackbody spectrum description.

I will post the review and a more detailed response later.  There was also a second review that is demonstrably not even about my paper.  I received the reviews and reject decision in early October.  I wrote a letter to FOOP soon after asking for more specifics on what the alleged errors are, and pointing out that the other review was not even about my paper, but have not received any reply other than from the Springer front office that my letter would be forward appropriately.

There are several reasons I continue to have confidence that there are no substantive algebraic errors in my paper.  The algebra in the paper is rather simple, and most of it is quite standard and published by others and in mainstream journals, as cited. It seems the reviewer has no familiarity with this literature and couldn't be bothered to look at the relevant references. In the use of the relativistic Doppler effect, the treatment is completely standard and in many textbooks. Algebra associated with Lorentz factors could be a bit surprising perhaps to those unfamiliar with it, but seriously I think it is reasonable to expect a professional physicist to be intimatey familiar with it. I tried to put essentially every step in the derivation embedded in either the narrative text or as numbered equations, to the point that I can check every step just on re-reading the paper.  Rereading it post-review I could not see any errors to correct.

I also spent a lot of time going over the derivation, immediately after obtaining the result, hoping to eliminate the factor of one-half I'd obtained compared to the Planck-Einstein law (i.e. E = h nu).  When I realized I could (probably) calculate an energy-frequency relation for the composite photon (as described in Don Lincoln's Scientific American article, "The Inner Life of Quarks"), I was wondering if I would get the Planck-Einstein relation, and thinking it would be a nice paper if I did.  So I was irritated by the factor of half, which I viewed initially as an obstacle to publication and general acceptance, and looked long and hard for mistakes or a way to get rid of it. The fact that I couldn't get any other result however gave me a suspicion that there might be something more profound about what I'd found.  Still, I set the problem aside for months because I was working on understanding the relativistic interaction between two zitter electrons.

My paper published by FOOP in 2016 only worked out the case of nonrelativistic motion of the interacting zitter particles (which are however intrinsically relativistic objects), and wasn't clear that this restriction was in effect, so I was trying hard to get the full result for submittal as a sequel. In working the interaction problem out more systematically, however, I soon realized that the factor of a half I'd obtained on the photon energy-frequency relationship compared to expectation could be related to the energy eigenvalues that would result from an equation I was able to obtain for the interaction of two zitter electrons.  The equation is identical to a one-dimensional free-particle Schroedinger equation except that the frequency is doubled (its derivation is in the previous arxiv version to the link above, v7, which is a much longer version but has various issues that make it unsuitable for publication until they can be worked out or split off).  This naturally leads to an expectation that photons with energy equatable with the difference between energy eigenvalues will be halved, in agreement with my result for the photon.  It also provides an explanation for the spin-orbit coupling anomaly that doesn't require invoking the Thomas precession, which I have thought for a long time to be an obviously  incorrect and poorly justified explanation.  Halving of all energy levels (which is different than halving the Planck constant, a distinction missed by Reviewer 1) is a much more elegant resolution the spin-orbit coupling anomaly, which can coexist with the Dirac relativistic electron theory, and explain why the Thomas precession does not appear explicitly in the latter, which also does not suffer the anomaly of the semiclssical spin-orbit coupling analysis.

Having things appearing to come together in a more-compelling semiclassical resolution of the spin-orbit coupling anomaly was very exciting, but I was still intimidated by the problem of disagreement with Planck and Einstein, so for months I put off trying to reconcile my photon result with theirs.  This was fine as long as I was making progress on the relativistic zitter particle interaction problem, but when that got bogged down I decided to attempt a reconcilation.  I started with a close examination of how Planck derived successfully the first black-body spectrum.  I wasn't expecting to find a mistake (and I didn't), but I thought maybe I could incorporate negative energy states, as these would not have been recognized as a possibility circa 1900, and by doubling the number of possible energy levels the factor of a half might arise in a convincing way.  However I was unable to build an argument that worked around this idea.  Then I started thinking about and looking at how Einstein incorporated the Planck result into his conjecture that light is corpuscular and realized there is a basic disconnect between a photon that carries nonzero momentum and the energy states in a cavity resonator that were studied by Planck. That is, the states studied by Planck (and Rayleigh and Jeans before him) were standing wave modes and as such cannot possess nonzero momentum.  As is well known, standing waves can be understood as a superposition of two equal-amplitude oppositely traveling waves, which leads naturally to each standing wave mode of quantized energy consisting of an even number of oppositely-traveling photons within the cavity.  This seems perfectly natural to me as a description of the cavity in thermodynamic equilibrium, where for every photon being radiated and absorbed in one direction, there is necessarily another in the opposite direction.  Otherwise, a closed cavity oscillator in isolation will not maintain a constant temperature over its external surface, and will tend to accelerate spontaneously if placed in free space.  So it seems to me that Einstein's adoption of the energy of Planck's quantum of energy for the cavity oscillator modes as the energy of a light corpuscle was not carefully thought out but rather a careless assumption.

Later I will post both of the FOOP reviews and try to comment more specifically on them, but for now I will just mention that I sent the slightly revised version of my paper, along with the FOOP submittal and reviews to EJTP (a peer-reviewed journal without publication fees) and they have acknowledged receiving it.

If anyone can point out any errors in the arxiv version I'd be grateful if they would post them here and/or email them to me.  Unhappy but grateful nonetheless. Moderation is on so comments won't post right away but I promise I will approve any serious comment.     

Status Update on My Photon Paper

My paper on the energy-frequency relation of a composite photon was sent out for review by Foundations of Physics, and their website reports they are complete as of September 14, but I haven't yet seen them or been informed of a decision.

I want to mention that essentially all of the content of the submitted paper is in the larger arxiv paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.04446

The longer paper I think better motivates the content of the submitted photon paper by putting it in a larger context.  But it's long and still has some problems so I didn't think it wise to submit in its entirety.

https://www.youtube.com/@DavidLush-z1m