Chapter 650 Serious Flaw

Proven?

Lu Zhou glanced at the screen in surprise and put down the coffee cup in his hand.

"Are you sure you are claiming proof? Instead of providing a possible way of proof?"

"Yes... the author of the paper claims to have solved the mass gap problem of the Yang-Mills equation, and this claimant is not young," Luo Wenxuan continued in an unbelievable tone as he glanced at the author's information. , "Brian Caro, a professor at Oxford University, a student of the Royal Society and a member of the European Academy of Sciences, has participated in research related to the discovery of the Higgs particle, and has won five honors including the Newton Medal issued by the British Physical Society... Incredible , he is sixty years old this year."

The age of sixty is not the golden age of studying physics, but it is not the age of memory decline. However, even so, it is not easy to make such achievements at this age.

However, probably because Lu Zhou didn't know much about theoretical physics, he had never heard of this Professor Brian Carroll.

Hearing Senior Brother Luo finish reading his resume, Lu Zhou paused and continued to ask.

"Has the paper been released as a preprint? Or is it just an abstract?"

Luo Wenxuan clicked the mouse twice: "The preprint has been released."

Although this situation is relatively rare in the field of mathematics, it is not a rare thing in the field of physics. Especially in the field of theoretical physics, for the research of some major propositions, even many senior professors like to hang up a preprint to occupy the pit first, so as to prevent scholars in the same field from getting ahead first.

After all, it is too difficult to make achievements in this field, and a step slower than others may lead to years of hard work in vain.

Lu Zhou said with interest: "Print a copy for me."

"Okay... Speaking of it, I have never understood why you like to read papers on paper. Aren't e-readers very convenient now?"

"No particular reason, it's just that I like to read tangible papers."

Although Lu Zhou occasionally reads literature on his mobile phone, it is only when it is inconvenient.

If he can sit on the sofa in the library or read it carefully at the desk in the study, he would naturally prefer to print the paper and read it on paper. One is that it is convenient to take some notes, and the other is that it is convenient for him to write down the inspiration that suddenly flashed in his mind.

The printer hums.

While printing the paper, Luo Wenxuan, who was staring at the paper on the screen, suddenly said something abruptly.

"What if he's right?"

Hearing this sentence, Lu Zhou was slightly taken aback, and gave him a strange look.

"That's right, what's the problem?"

Luo Wenxuan also gave him a strange look, and said in disbelief.

"You don't feel sorry?"

Lu Zhou: "What is there to regret?"

Luo Wenxuan made a helpless expression: "Please, we have studied for such a long time, and now we are only short of the last point, but someone else took the lead. You don't feel it at all."

Lu Zhou said indifferently: "There is nothing to regret, no matter who solves this problem, it is the same to me."

He has won both the Fields Medal and the Nobel Prize. In terms of personal honor, Lu Zhou actually doesn't have much pursuit. The reason why he studies these issues is just because he wants to get an answer. If someone is inspired by his research and successfully solves the problem of mass gap, it will be more gratifying for him than solving this problem by himself.

Seeing Lu Zhou's indifferent appearance, Luo Wenxuan opened his mouth and finally sighed.

"Well... I can't reach your level yet."

Lu Zhou said casually: "There will be such a day."

...

In a minute or two, the twenty-page thesis was printed on paper.

As a preprint for informal publication, judging from the thickness of the content of the paper, this paper can be said to be written with sincerity.

At least in terms of format, it has met the format requirements of general medium-length journals, and the argumentation part of the text is quite clear. It is not like those preprints that are only hung on the Internet for the purpose of occupying pits, and you can find dozens of them at a glance. loophole.

After printing out the thesis, Lu Zhou found a sofa in Senior Brother Luo's office and sat down, combined with the abstract of the thesis, quickly went through the text.

In general, Professor Brian Carroll's ability is not bad, both in the sense of mathematics and physics. Although there is still a certain gap between him and some of the top scholars he knows, at least his ability and reputation still match.

And what surprised Lu Zhou the most was that the method used by Professor Brian Carroll was similar to the one he and Brother Luo chose. They were all based on Professor Jaffe's paper published in the Annals of Mathematics , to explain the existence of the mass gap by studying particles with mass m.

However, when it comes to how to study this particle with a mass of m, the two sides have different ideas.

What Brian Carroll considered was not to introduce a quantum field corresponding to the classical action in the aforementioned problem—that is, the quantum Yang-Mills field to solve this problem. Instead, he adopted a method similar to Weinberg’s, by introducing A scalar field on a space-time manifold is proposed to solve this problem.

Regardless of the areas that are open to discussion in the paper, at least in Lu Zhou's view, it is very imprecise.

After all, the zero-mass problem of strong interactions cannot be solved simply by using the "symmetry breaking" method.

"His proof is very close to the truth, but in the end he missed the end." Putting down the thesis in his hand, Lu Zhou touched the coffee at hand, but found that the cup was cold, so he got up and walked to the water dispenser Next to it, ready to make another cup.

Upon hearing what Lu Zhou said, Luo Wenxuan immediately raised his head and said with a high spirit.

"So he was wrong?"

"Don't gloat, his thesis still has merits, such as discussing the existence of the four-dimensional gauge field from the regularization of lattice points, and another example in the torus Euclid's partial gauge invariant action Well-defined path integrals... Of course, he has a lot of problems."

Luo Wenxuan: "For example?"

"For example, while discussing this issue from the regularization of the lattice point, he did not prove that the lattice point step size tends to the zero-time limit, so the method of defining the gauge invariant action in the torus Euclid space-time is not rigorous, even it's wrong."

Speaking of this, Lu Zhou blew along the mouth of the cup after refilling a cup of coffee, took a sip, and continued after a pause for a few seconds, "But I'm not sure if it's because it's a preprint, maybe He's already thought of a good way to prove it, he just didn't post it here."

This situation is also very common.

After all, many high-quality papers on Arxiv have been perfected through constant discussions and revisions.

Luo Wenxuan: "So he didn't prove it?"

"It looks like this at the moment. No matter what others think, at least in my opinion, he didn't succeed." Speaking of this, Lu Zhou sighed, his tone slightly disappointed.

He originally thought that Professor Brian could make him see things differently, but he didn't expect that he still made a mistake that almost everyone would make.

Sure enough, to solve this problem, you still have to rely on yourself.