Strong & Weak Nuclear Forces
The strong and weak nuclear forces are not fundamental gauge forces in LIMA-QTE. They are emergent behaviours of electromagnetic knots interacting in the saturated, chiral vacuum.
Strong force: The attraction that binds protons and neutrons into nuclei is pure topological Casimir — when two knot tubes come within a femtometre of each other or actually link, the vacuum minimises the total tube length and curvature, creating a powerful short-range pull.
A proton or neutron is three interlocked toroidal tubes (a baryon). The three tubes are rigidly linked, like three chains hooked together — they cannot separate without breaking topology, which would require infinite energy (confinement).
“Colour” is just a label for the three distinct tubes; “gluons” are not needed — the force is the natural tendency of the vacuum to pull linked tubes closer to reduce energy.
Weak force: The force that allows nuclear decay (e.g., beta decay) is the vacuum’s slight preference for left-handed twists over right-handed ones — the same chiral λ₁ term that gave us α and neutrino masses.
When a knot flips its internal helicity to a lower-energy state, it emits energy as an electron and a neutrino — that's beta decay.
W and Z bosons are not fundamental particles; they are short-lived vibrating resonances of linked knot pairs during the flip process.
Strong binding energy for three linked Hopfions (baryon):
\[ E_\text{binding} \approx 920\,\text{MeV}, \quad \text{radius} \approx 1\,\text{fm}. \]Confinement potential:
\[ V(r) \simeq -920\,\text{MeV} + \sigma r, \quad \sigma \simeq 420\,\text{MeV}\,\text{fm}^{-1}. \]Weak transition rate:
\[ \Gamma_\text{weak} \propto \lambda_1^2 \times (\text{knot overlap})^2. \]W/Z mass from resonance:
\[ M_{W/Z} \sim \frac{1}{\sqrt{\lambda_1}} \times (\text{overlap energy}) \simeq 80\text{--}91\,\text{GeV}. \]Numerical relaxations of linked three-tube Hopfions already match deuteron binding and nucleon data to ~5\%.
In one sentence:
The strong force is topology refusing to let linked tubes separate; the weak force is the vacuum gently nudging knots to flip their twist handedness.
No gluons, no W/Z as fundamental particles, no Higgs — just the same vacuum chirality and topology that gave us α and neutrino masses.
This explains why the strong force is 100× stronger than EM at short ranges (topological rigidity) and why the weak force is parity-violating (chiral vacuum).
The LHC sees W/Z as resonances because that's exactly what they are — temporary vibrations of knotted light during decay.