Research Interests

• Published Ideas

Quantum Canonical Transformations

A good part of my Ph.D. thesis contended with quantum canonical transformations, which were at the time known to fail at two loops and beyond. Working within the context of the path integral I was able to overcome this obstacle and give a more rigorous stance to canonical transformations in a quantum context, one free of obstructions.

Special Relativity

Using a variation on the theme of the classic pole and barn paradox it was possible to derive a fundamental strength limit that disallows macroscopic wormholes, gives a suggestive derivation of the 1/r and r potentials so prevalent in Nature and even a reason why the Casimir vacuum energy is not actually negative.

General Relativity quantized

Somewhat later I tried to tackle the unrenormalizability of perturbative quantum gravity and found a way around by starting with higher derivative gravity but ending up with Einstein gravity quantized, again side-stepping the impossibility proof.

Quantum Field Theory: Operator Regularization

A replacement to dimensional regularization based on analytic continuation that works to all loop order; up till now it was felt to be incompatible with Feynman diagrams, but this turns out not to be the case.

Event Horizon of a black hole

It is argued that it takes an infinite amount of external time for a freely falling test particle to reach the event horizon of a classical black hole (which happens in finite faller time), and that in this time the black hole would have evaporated due to Hawking radiation; so the freely falling test particle would itself evaporate at the event horizon, and so not pass further down. To date it has been assumed that the vacuum solution is valid below the Horizon, but this is questioned.

Quantum error avoidance

Quantum error correction may not be possible, but avoidance (via the Zeno effect) may be an option.

Accelerating charge

Since an accelerating charge radiates, by the equivalence principle one on a table should also, but without an energy source; seems the Larmor formula is flawed and a replacement located.

Quantum error correction

It has been shown that one quantum error can be corrected, but this ignores that fact that qubits have both digital and analogue aspects and so the assumption of a single error is flawed.

• Pre-Printed Ideas

Magnetic Monopoles

Lenz's law and conservation of energy suggests that magnetic monopoles can't exist.

Quark constituents

Below a certain size a particle cannot have component parts or by the uncertainty principle they would contribute more energy/mass than the particle has.

• Unpublished Ideas

Compact dimensions

Compact dimensions would make the twins paradox real.

Deterministic quantum theory

Everett's many-world proposal is an attempt to restore determinism to quantum theory, without coming to terms with the idea that this implies that Windows 12 would be woven into the fabric of space-time in the era of the dinosaurs and so would be present in very few worlds.