Possible implications for particle physics by quantum measurement

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel quantum Zeno effect-based model that offers new insights into fundamental particle properties, including neutrino oscillations, mass hierarchies, and confinement, without challenging the Standard Model.

Contribution

It introduces an effective perturbative model applying the quantum Zeno effect to explain key particle physics phenomena in a unified manner.

Findings

Neutrino oscillations with big-angle mixing and small masses emerge from energy-momentum conservation.

Mass hierarchy of charged fermions is explained by electric-charge conservation.

Color confinement and asymptotic freedom are derived from color-charge conservation.

Abstract

In sharp contrast to its classical counterpart, quantum measurement plays a fundamental role in quantum mechanics and blurs the essential distinction between the measurement apparatus and the objects under investigation. An appealing phenomenon in quantum measurements, termed as quantum Zeno effect, can be observed in particular subspaces selected by measurement Hamiltonian. Here we apply the top-down Zeno mechanism to the particle physics. We indeed develop an alternative insight into the properties of fundamental particles, but not intend to challenge the Standard Model (SM). In a unified and simple manner, our effective model allows to merge the origin of neutrino's small mass and oscillations, the hierarchy pattern for masses of electric charged fermions, the color confinement, and the discretization of quantum numbers, using a perturbative theory for the dynamical quantum Zeno effect. Under various conditions for vanishing transition amplitudes among particle eigenstates in the effective model, it is remarkable to probe results that are somewhat reminiscent of SM, including: (i) neutrino oscillations with big-angle mixing and small masses emerge from the energy-momentum conservation, (ii) electrically-charged fermions hold masses in a hierarchy pattern due to the electric-charge conservation, (iii) color confinement and the associated asymptotic freedom can be deduced from the color-charge conservation. We make several anticipations about the basic properties for fundamental particles: (i) the total mass of neutrinos and the existence of a nearly massless neutrino (of any generation), (ii) the discretization in quantum numbers for the new-discovered electrically-charged fermions, (iii) the confinement and the associated asymptotic freedom for any particle containing more than two conserved charges.