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Are these “frozen” quasar anyons? Nobody has ever addressed my question about how the braiding you’d expect to form in a quasar would unwind — and if it doesn’
by zmgsabst 5y ago
Are these “frozen” quasar anyons?
Nobody has ever addressed my question about how the braiding you’d expect to form in a quasar would unwind — and if it doesn’t, we should expect to find most structures along “cooled, inflated” braiding. Which we seem to.
> Explained in a colloquial manner, the extended objects (loop, string, or membrane, etc.) can be potentially anyonic in 3+1 and higher spacetime dimensions in the long-range entangled systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyon
In particular, the “loops” would be magnetic field lines from the singularity to the disc (and back), which would become tangled via swirls within the disc as it spiraled inwards. While each piece would be small, the total braid would be quite large — due to number of particles and chaotic nature of the disc.
I know a single anyon doesn’t weigh much - but is there an estimate of “anyonic mass” to the galaxy, stores as tangles?
- raattgift 5y ago> Nobody has ever addressed my question Ok, I will try. I have to admit I do not fully understand what you are asking. As noted in the link at the top, it is reasonable to speculate that these filaments are related to the activity of the galactic centre supermassive black hole. However, we do not have a quasar in our galaxy, and it is hard to imagine (consistent with evidence from this and similar galaxies at various cosmological redshifts) that the Milky Way possessed an active galactic centre which subsequently was quenched. Indeed, part of the mystery here is that there is a quite weak magnetic field permeating the galactic centre, and little outward cosmic ray pressure. The spectral index (more details at https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10552 https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10552 §3.1, "nonthermal radio filaments that have broad spectral index distribution as well as the steepest spectral index that can readily be discerned at high latitudes", cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_index although neither link is especially friendly to non-experts) is entirely consistent with synchrotron radiation, which does not require any exotic particles at the filamentary sources of the radio emissions. As discussed in §3.2 of the arxiv preprint, all we need is highly accelerated electrons. The mechanism for accelerating the electrons is unknown, but there are several explanations available that do not require exotic particles. §4.3 discusses several plausible alternatives. I'm no expert on anyons but I do know how Wilczek described them when he first proposed them, and Keilmann's observations of his humour, and I struggle to see what problems introducing anyons might reasonably solve at these bulk scales. Additionally, I do not see how anyonic behaviour -- rather than straightforward magnetobremsstrahlung -- could be relevant, much less a better description, at the warm temperatures in the environments of these filaments and galactic centre molecular clouds. Unfortunately, I don't understand your second last paragraph at all.
- SiempreViernes 5y agoWait, how do we get the Fermi bubbles without a period of active galactic centre? Or do you mean that there's been no large scale jets from our SMBH?
- raattgift 5y ago"Quasar" goes to luminosity, and our galaxy could never have been as luminous as any quasar we know of without some mechanism to totally block fast (matter) outflows and another to block the quenching of star formation from the negative feedback of a highly luminous galactic centre. Our central black hole is very quiet (as opposed to active), at least a dozen orders of magnitude below the Eddington luminosity in X-rays. Quasars are at (or a very large percentage of) the Eddington luminosity, almost certainly for at least Gyr durations. The Fermi bubbles are interesting, but around luminous AGNs (at all redshifts) we tend to find extended outflows in ionized ("hibals") and molecular gasses, and afaik we don't see anything like that associated with those gammas. AFAIR there is also a missing ~ 1250 angstrom restframe peak and an associated relativistic wind's redshift (0.1-0.2 c or 30-60 Mm/s) leading to line driving. About a decade ago there was a fair amount of discussion about the Fermi bubbles as evidence of a (not so high) luminosity AGN jet, but it seemed to require contrivances to drop in a sufficiently massive molecular cloud (~ 10^5 solar masses around 10^7 years ago, but don't quote me, not my speciality, and I was already convinced about the present << quasar luminosity (and no trace of tremendous variability or eruptive phase up to considerably more than a few percent of the Eddington luminosity) and by the stellar population).
- zmgsabst 5y agoI appreciate the reply, but I think we’re slightly talking past each other in that you’re discussing anyons as a source of the emissions from the structure, while I’m saying that the emissions are from a classical source aligned to an anyon — the overall structure the radiant gases you’re describing are attracted to, and source of filament shape. That the emissions match synchrotron radiation doesn’t distinguish, in that we’d expect electrons flowing along/around a loop excitation to emit precisely that, right? I would say that galactic anyons solve a problem: The toroidal knotting you’d expect around some kind of active black hole would produce effects we see, and connects them via the same mechanism — 1. Why galaxies have weird filament structures everywhere — gas is settling into loop excitations around the black hole; 2. Which is also why the galaxy seems unusually bound, because pulling it apart places additional strain in many, many anyons we can’t see or readily interact with (due to scale); 3. While also explaining the same features at a higher scale, eg galactic clusters or why so many things like Great Attractor look like the intersection of a toroidal knot. My last paragraph is that it’s my understanding some tiny amount of energy goes into being the anyon, and hence it has mass. So the “braiding” of any system would contribute a (small?) mass to it — and I wanted to see the calculation. I assume I’m off on a wild chase, but I want to see where the math fails for my own education.