While Xu Chuan was thinking about how to unify the strong electricity, the academic community had completely exploded because of the paper he threw on arxiv.

The paper hanging on Arxiv, like a butterfly in the Amazon rainforest, flapped its wings slightly, and set off a violent storm all over the world.

For scholars in mathematics and physics, even if they had been prepared for it, they had already predicted that the remaining part of the Yang-Mills existential and mass gap would soon be resolved.

But when they actually saw that paper, many people were still shocked.

Fast!

It's so fast!

Since the release of "The Existence and Proof of the Solution of the Young-Mills Equation" in late May, less than two months have passed, and the part of the mass gap conjecture has been made public.

Faced with this paper, even the top mathematicians and physicists could not control the shock in their hearts.

Of course, they were shocked not only by how quickly the other party was able to solve the remaining quality gap problem, but also by the huge amount of knowledge contained in the paper. and the theories and ideas used in solving the problem of mass clearance.

By performing high-dimensional torsion of the epidemic, a gauge quantum field is constructed to construct an infinite plane metric space with geometric symmetry, spontaneous or vacuum breaking, and the existence of a particle of mass m in the Yang-Mills existential and mass gap problem is found.

After all, in the physics community, physicists have long calculated the mass m of the particle through the scalar field on the space-time manifold, and the computer simulation results are basically consistent.

The only thing that academia has not been able to do is to explain it in mathematical language.

Of course, this does not mean that this paper is ordinary.

In fact, it's still a treasure trove in the academic world, especially with the mathematical techniques used throughout the idea, which are simply subtle.

Through the change of manifold, the concept of dimension is introduced, so that the quantum field at different points in different dimensions can be transformed differently.

Coupled with the dimensional non-negative requirement of the coupling constant and the Lorentz invariant requirement, then, regardless of whether this symmetry is spontaneously broken or not, a particle of mass m must exist in this system.

For the physics community, this is a new mathematical concept deduced from the objective existence logic of elementary particles, which exists in reality and is feasible.

According to this new concept of physics and mathematics, the physics community will be able to discover more new elementary particles in the future, further confirming the real existence of this momentum gauge field.

There is even an opportunity to find the path and method to the Great Unification Theory!

On the campus of Jinling, NTU, Xu Chuan has been sitting behind his desk thinking about how to unify the theory of strong interaction and electroweakness after uploading the relevant papers.

Time passed, and it was noon in the blink of an eye, and just as he was about to put down his research and go to lunch, there was a sudden knock on the office door.

Looking up, Chen Zhengping and Yu Yongwang, the dean of the Nanda Institute, walked in together.

"Mentor, Dean Yu, why are you here?" Seeing the two of them, Xu Chuan stood up with a smile and said hello.

"You sent that paper on Arxiv's preprint site?" Yu Yongwang asked quickly.

Hearing this, Xu Chuan smiled and said, "You mean the one with the quality gap?" ”

"Yes!"

Before Xu Chuan could answer, on the side, Chen Zhengping interjected: "Who else can there be besides him, who else can complete the proof of quality clearance in such a short period of time, Lao Yu, you are not asking at all." ”

On the side, Yu Yongwang said with a smile: "Aren't I too shocked, in less than two months, I have solved the solution proof and mass gap problem of the Yang-Mills equation before and after, you let me not ask, confirm it, I really can't believe it." ”

Xu Chuan smiled and said, "It's just a matter of course, the solution of the Yang-Mills equation and the existence of the mass gap can be handled by the construction of manifolds and the invariant coupling of differentiable structures. ”

"And from the problem point of view, solving the mass gap problem does not require an accurate calculation of the mass mass of the M particle, it is enough to prove that it exists."

Hearing this, Chen Zhengping glanced at Zi Xu Chuan, and the corners of his mouth couldn't help twitching.

It feels as simple as anyone can do it.

But is it actually simple?

Impossible.

If the quality gap problem is really so easy to solve, why hasn't anyone been able to do it for nearly 100 years?

The Yang-Mills existential and mass gap problem is not an unpopular field, it is not only not unpopular, but it is also one of the hottest research directions in the frontier of theoretical physics.

The establishment of the Standard Model based on the Yang-Mills equation has brought countless treasures to the physics community, and the number of Nobel Prize winners in physics has exceeded double digits.

But for decades, countless physicists and mathematicians have failed to solve this problem.

Obviously, its difficulty is far more than Xu Chuan said.

But at this point, he didn't have the heart to think about this, he had already read the paper on the quality gap, but there were still many questions in his mind.

Taking a deep breath, Chen Zhengping opened his mouth and asked, "How do you explain the quantum nature of the mass gap?" ”

This question is the key to the Yang-Mills field theory, the core of its success in explaining strong interactions, and it is also something he did not understand in his paper.

Hearing this question, Xu Chuan smiled, stood up and dragged out a blackboard from the corner, and explained while writing:

"In quantum mechanics, we usually think of the position and velocity of a particle as non-commutative operators acting in a Hilbert space, and fields are used to describe many natural phenomena."

"For example, the electric and magnetic fields in Maxwell's equations, the gravitational field in Einstein's equations, and so on. However, in gauge potential, in gauge theory, it is mathematically described as a master-slave connection, which is closely related to elementary particles and their interactions."

While Xu Chuan and Chen Zhengping were explaining some of the problems in quality gap papers, the papers he uploaded to the ARXIV preprint website were also fermenting in the academic community.

Geneva, CERN.

With the intervention of the United States, the board of directors of CERN suspended cooperation with China, and the LH-LHC high-brightness hadron collider was upgraded and restarted, and the place gradually returned to its former liveliness.

On the road in front of the Center Building, two researchers in the field of high-energy physics held some conference materials in their hands, chatting and walking to a café not far away, as if they were going to have afternoon tea.

While chatting, the conversation shifted to the LHC Hadron Collider, which had already started work for upgrades.

"Do you think the LHC can find dark matter after this upgrade?"

"Who knows, maybe it's possible that Huaguo will find it first?"

"No, didn't you say that the collider over there hadn't started construction yet? The upgrade of lhc has already begun, will CERN be slower than Huaguo? ”

Hearing this, the companion next to him smiled and said, "My friend, it is not possible to explore those things that are beyond the Standard Model alone, it requires us to have the most detailed understanding of them in theory. ”

"And right now, the person who knows the most about dark matter and dark energy isn't here."

Hearing this, he sighed and said, "I really don't understand why CERN would cancel its cooperation with Huaguo, shouldn't the research in the field of high-energy physics be done by the whole world?" Now it's split into two sides. ”

The companion shrugged his shoulders and didn't speak, just then, the phone in his pocket vibrated for a moment, and he suddenly stopped when he felt it out and glanced at the message.

"What's wrong?" The friend next to him asked, looking at him curiously.

"The mass gap problem of strong interaction has been solved!"

"It can't be."

"That Professor Xu Chuan has uploaded the paper to arxiv."

Hearing this, his friend next to him was stunned for a moment, couldn't help but take a deep breath, and said in surprise: "If I'm not mistaken, it seems that he published his paper on the proof of the existence and solution of the solution of the Yang-Mills equation in May, right?" ”

"And now it's only the beginning of July, and in two months, the quality gap problem has been solved? Isn't that a bit of an exaggeration? ”

The companion spoke: "It's not been a month and a half to be exact. ”

"Incredible! It was so fast that I didn't even fully understand the proof of the existence and solution of the solution of the Yang-Mills equation, and he made the rest. ”

"Do you want a cup of coffee?"

"No, I want to download and print the paper first, anyway, I can drink coffee at any time."

"Together?"

"Let's go!"

The two CERN researchers are just a microcosm, and similar things are happening all over the world.

In Princeton's office, Eduard Witten chats with Pierre Deligne over a cup of coffee.

"How do you feel about that mass-gap paper with strong interactions?" After a shallow taste of the coffee in the cup, Witten looked at Deligne and asked.

Sitting on the sofa, Deligne glanced at this old friend, and said lightly: "Don't you already have a certain number in your heart?" ”

Hearing this, Witten smiled helplessly, sighed and said, "It seems that there is really no hope." ”

For him, solving the mass gap problem is also a recent focus of his research, especially after his student solved the existential problem of the solution of the Yang-Mills equation, the difficulty of the mass gap problem has become much less.

If he can solve this problem, maybe he can win the physics prize with Xu Chuan at this year's Nobel Prize ceremony, which is something he has always dreamed of.

Hearing Witten's sigh, Deligne glanced at the old fellow with some pity.

As the father of contemporary string theory and the first physicist to win the Fields Medal, he should have been the most likely scholar to win both the Nobel and Fields Medals.

Sadly, that hope is gone.

The two of them took in a brilliant genius student together, and at the age of only twenty-two, they took away the honor that countless scholars have struggled for in their lifetimes.

Shaking his head slightly, Deligne spoke: "The quality gap problem is probably hopeless, and since he has made the paper public, I'm afraid there won't be any problems." However, the problem of strong electricity unification has not been solved, maybe you can try it? ”

As early as when Witten began to study the quality gap problem, he was actually not very optimistic.

After all, with their student's character, half of a problem is solved, and it makes no sense that the rest will be left alone.

Now that he has started, I'm afraid that his friend, even as a mentor, will have a hard time competing with his students.

However, there is no hope for the quality gap problem, and he thinks that Witten can try it.

If this problem is solved, you may even be able to win the coveted Nobel Prize.

Witten shook his head with a smile and replied: "It's difficult, the problem of the unification of strong interaction and electromagnetic interaction is not so easy to solve, and even now his solution to the Yang-Mills existential and mass gap problem is just some hope." ”

After a pause, he looked at Deligne and said with a smile: "Moreover, if he is right about the mass gap problem, I think I am afraid that no one will go further than him in terms of strong electrical unification, and no one will understand more deeply than him, even if it is the two of us, we may not be able to beat him together."

As he spoke, Witten was suddenly stunned for a moment, and after a pause, he looked at Deligne: "Do you want to try it together?" ”

Hearing this, Deligne was stunned for a moment: "Try what?" ”

Witten took a deep breath and said seriously: "Join forces, try to solve the unification problem of strong interaction and electromagnetic interaction together, and compete with that student of ours?" ”

Although it was clear that their student was far superior to him in terms of academic talent, as a genius, especially for Witten, when he was young, he was also a demon, and joining forces with Deligne to compete with his students in the field of strong electricity unification was probably his last attempt.

Hearing Witten's invitation, Deligne was also silent for a moment.

It's not just Witten, he wasn't a demon when he was young.

There are only a dozen mathematicians in the world who can win both the Fields Medal and the Wolf Medal so far, and on this basis, there are less than a few more slaps in the face that can win the Cafford Prize in Mathematics, and it can be said that there is less than one billion people.

He is also a former math Grand Slam.

After a long silence, Deligne looked up at Witten and asked, "What if he hadn't studied the problem of strong electricity unification?" As far as I know, he has a lot of research and things at his disposal. ”

Hearing this question, Witten replied without thinking: "Do you think he will give up the research on the unification of strong electricity?" ”

Hearing this, Deligne was silent again.

Will Xu Chuan give up the unified theory of strong electricity, the biggest crown of theoretical physics in the 21st century?

Impossible!

If you have the ability to solve this problem, no one will give up.

After thinking for a moment, the two looked at each other again, and Deligne nodded and said, "Then let's try it once." ”

As Witten thought, this was probably the last attempt.

Whether they succeed or not, their era will eventually pass through their hands.

After all, time waits for no one