Elementary Particle Interactions

Abstract: The workshop on "The Early Universe and the Formation of Galaxies', held at Mount Stromlo in 1989, brought together interested workers from Australia with a number from the USSR. It is pleasing to see their contributions in print for the benefit of the rest of the community. Thirteen papers by different authors are collected here. While each paper concentrates on the particular area of interest and expertise of the author(s), most contributors have made an effort to review the field and set their own work in context, including a fair hearing for opposing views. In representing the authors' own interests, the coverage cannot be a uniform survey of the field, but a pleasingly diverse range of topics from modern cosmology is covered. The history of the universe is imprinted on its matter and radiation in many ways, and the traditional method of looking back in time by using the light travel time for radiation originating at very great distances is only one. Today there is much interest in the origin of large-scale structure (from say 10 to 100 Mpc), as pursued through the extensive galaxy redshift surveys that have been made in recent years. The redshifts of such galaxies are so low that they can be considered our near neighbours in one sense. But the data are of cosmological importance because structures on such a scale cannot have developed 'recently': even at 1000 kms 1 a galaxy moves only ~ 10 Mpc in the age of the universe. Thus the structures (filaments, voids, foams and even fractals, at a scale larger than clusters of galaxies) require a cosmological origin for the seeding inhomogeneities and a mechanism for development from rather smooth structure in the very early universe (enforced by the isotropy of the microwave background). The papers by Einasto and Saar give a good picture of the Soviet work on fractal structure of the universe, a fascinating modern-day vindication of de Vaucouleurs' vigorous argument in 1970 for a hierarchical universe. This is an important point because if the large scale structure does indeed turn out to have fractal properties, then the two-point correlation function, used for so many years to give information about the spatial structure of galaxies, will have led us on a false trail.

Abstract: Analysis of direct measurements of van der Waals forces yields restrictions on the mass of light scalar particles and the coupling constant for the coupling of these particles with fermions. For the scalar particles of the supersymmetry theory (the scalar axion) the scale of a supersymmetry violation would be restricted to M/sup 2/>10/sup 6/ GeV/sup 2/.

Abstract: BS>The theory of the structure of elementary particle interactions is examined, using a formalism involving octonions. The relations between quaternions and octonions. as well as the algebraic properties of octonions. are discussed. The relations between octonion transformations and elementary particle interactions are shown. The formalism is described for strong, non- leptonic weak, and leptonic weak interactions. (T.F.H.)