Spacetime foam and the electroweak coupling constant

TL;DR

This paper links spacetime foam models in quantum gravity to the electroweak coupling constant, showing a remarkable coincidence that suggests a deep connection between quantum gravitational effects and gauge interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute the regularized temperature of spacetime foam and finds a precise match with the electroweak coupling constant at the W boson energy scale.

Findings

The squared temperature matches the electroweak coupling constant.

Supports the idea of a connection between quantum gravity and gauge couplings.

Aligns with classical results relating charge and gravitational self-energy.

Abstract

We compute the regularized temperature for a spacetime foam model, consisting on S^4 instantons, in quantum gravity. Assuming that thermal equilibrium takes place with some amount of radiation - with thermal fields in the SU(2)xU(1) gauge theory - we obtain the remarkable result that the squared value of this temperature exactly coincides with the electroweak coupling constant at the energy scale of the gauge bosons W. This is consistent with the classical ADM result that the electrical charge should be equal to its finite gravitational self energy.