Nima Arkani-Hamed et al - 2023

Finally... the first of a series of papers has been published on aiXrv on the 27th September 2023... mark my words, this is history in the making folks!... these are marvelously simple new ideas that I've been following since 2020... there is still a long way to go, but from all I've read and watched, their arguments and the amazing relationships they have found, I'm pretty confident that they are on the right track to eventually show that Spacetime and Quantum Mechanics really do emerge from deeper, and simpler, mathematical structures.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.15913.pdf

We find a novel formula for loop-integrated amplitudes, with no trace of the conventional sum over Feynman
diagrams, but instead determined by a beautifully simple counting problem attached to any
order of the topological expansion. These results represent a significant step forward in the
decade-long quest to formulate the fundamental physics of the real world in a radically new
language, where the rules of spacetime and quantum mechanics, as reflected in the principles
of locality and unitarity, are seen to emerge from deeper mathematical structures.

Finally... the first of a series of papers has been published on aiXrv on the 27th September 2023... mark my words, this is history in the making folks!... these are marvelously simple new ideas that I've been following since 2020... there is still a long way to go, but from all I've read and watched, their arguments and the amazing relationships they have found, I'm pretty confident that they are on the right track to eventually show that Spacetime and Quantum Mechanics really do emerge from deeper, and simpler, mathematical structures.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.15913.pdf

I don't understand the excitement about this. There's no new physics in this document, it's all about mathematics. It may be interesting in the context of mathematical philosophy if that's your thing.

I don't understand the excitement about this. There's no new physics in this document, it's all about mathematics. It may be interesting in the context of mathematical philosophy if that's your thing.

It is certainly a paper delineating math ideas beyond my ken.  However, it seems to me to be saying something highly significant about physics.  I hope to see more discussion on this subject!!!!

The paper is reporting, in my highly limited understanding, that it has found algorithms and math relations that tie deeply to the current state of string theory.  Just this in itself is important.  The paper is very highly optimistic and the love of the discoveries is evident in the language used.  I confess to a IAS centric viewpoint.

 Studying this limit might lead to a new understanding of the emergence of strings from colored particles at strong coupling. At strong coupling, the scattering for a small number of particles is exponentially small, and the amplitude is instead dominated by the emission of a huge number of particles, approximating field configurations that should more continuously connect to a string worldsheet picture

 This article focuses on colored scalar amplitudes. However, the results here have extensions to other theories. New curve integral formulations have been discovered for theories of colored scalar particles with arbitrary local interactions, as well as for the amplitudes of pions and non-supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories. These formulas reveal striking inter-relations between these theories, together with surprising hidden properties of their amplitudes that
are made manifest by the curve integral formalism.

Our results also have implications for the understanding of strings and UV completion.  The counting problem at the heart of this paper not only defines QFT amplitudes, it also defines amplitudes for bosonic strings, via the u-variables, uC, mentioned above. This gives a combinatorial formulation of string amplitudes that makes no reference to worldsheet CFTs and vertex operators. This new approach to string amplitudes differs from the conventional theory in a very fundamental way. - ibid 

Here is Ed Whitten on Nima's influence in 2021.
https://cerncourier.com/a/witten-reflects/

 A fascinating theory of this type is the “split supersymmetry” that has been proposed by Nima Arkani-Hamed and others. 

There is an obvious catch, however. It is easy enough to say “such-and-such will happen at an energy not too much above LHC energies”. But for practical purposes, it makes a world of difference whether this means three times LHC energies, six times LHC energies, 25 times LHC energies, or more. In theories such as split supersymmetry, the clues that we have are not sufficient to enable a real answer. A dream would be to get a concrete clue from experiment about what is the energy scale for new physics beyond the Higgs particle.

Max, with this new set of math tools is Arkani- Hamed still supporting a version of split super symmetry?  Do you think this project is giving new life to string theory?

It is certainly a paper delineating math ideas beyond my ken.  However, it seems to me to be saying something highly significant about physics.  I hope to see more discussion on this subject!!!!

The paper is reporting, in my highly limited understanding, that it has found algorithms and math relations that tie deeply to the current state of string theory.  Just this in itself is important.  The paper is very highly optimistic and the love of the discoveries is evident in the language used.  I confess to a IAS centric viewpoint.

Max, with this new set of math tools is Arkani- Hamed still supporting a version of split super symmetry?  Do you think this project is giving new life to string theory?

I don't recall Stephen.

They were able to finally tie it to string theory this year. But the raw ideas given in the lecture below are deeper and more profound.

Zoomplitudes 2020 Master Class was the first major online lecture about development of this theory, it's a tour de force of 12 hours - recorded over a few days, which explains where his ideas have come from. It goes into much greater detail than any of his other lectures. You don't need the maths to understand the concepts. I had to watch it several times over 12 months, but each time I returned to it, I understood more - I don't understand it all by any means. However, it's truly worth the struggle. His later lectures build upon the ideas in this lecture, but there are important insights in this lecture, which he never covers again.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...8c7gbvC-VK

I don't recall Stephen.

They were able to finally tie it to string theory this year. But the raw ideas given in the lecture below are deeper and more profound.

Zoomplitudes 2020 Master Class was the first major online lecture about development of this theory, it's a tour de force of 12 hours - recorded over a few days, which explains where his ideas have come from. It goes into much greater detail than any of his other lectures. You don't need the maths to understand the concepts. I had to watch it several times over 12 months, but each time I returned to it, I understood more - I don't understand it all by any means. However, it's truly worth the struggle. His later lectures build upon the ideas in this lecture, but there are important insights in this lecture, which he never covers again.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...8c7gbvC-VK

I can’t resist pointing out that string theory is just another mathematical framework unable to make any verifiable predictions. I suspect this is just more of the same.