The Nightmare Scenario and the Origin of the Standard Model. "We Got it Wrong ...How did we misread the signals? ... What to Do?"

TL;DR

This paper proposes a radical gauge theory-based origin for the Standard Model, emphasizing long-distance physics and the Critical Pomeron, challenging the conventional focus on short-distance extensions and explaining key phenomena without new short-distance physics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel gauge theory framework rooted in the Critical Pomeron that offers a paradigm shift and explains many Standard Model mysteries without requiring new short-distance physics.

Findings

Standard Model states and interactions are explained by a weak coupling SU(5) theory.

Confinement, chiral symmetry breaking, and electroweak symmetry breaking are incorporated.

No new short-distance physics is needed; only electroweak-scale QCD interactions are introduced.

Abstract

It is thought that the emergence of the "nightmare scenario" at the LHC could be a serious crisis for particle physics that could require radical new concepts and even a major paradigm change. A root cause may have been exaggeration of the significance of asymptotic freedom, leading to the historically profound mistake of formulating new short-distance extensions of the Standard Model while ignoring both serious infra-red problems and central elements of long-distance physics. In fact, pursuit of the uniquely unitary Critical Pomeron leads to a possible gauge theory origin for the Standard Model that is both radical and paradigm changing, but also explains many mysteries. A bound-state S-Matrix embedded in a unique weak coupling massless SU(5) field theory emerges. The states and interactions of the Standard Model are enhanced, and the underlying SU(5) unification suppressed, by a wee parton divergence phenomenon involving wee gauge bosons coupled to S-Matrix massless fermion anomalies. Confinement, chiral symmetry breaking, the parton model, electroweak symmetry breaking, dark matter, and neutrino masses, all appear to be present. Most significantly, perhaps, there is a Higgs boson but, as seen experimentally at the LHC, there is no new short-distance physics. The only new physics is electroweak-scale QCD interactions due to color sextet quarks.