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Hadronic Electrons? (1975) |
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By analogy with hadrons, the core of the electron is taken as a collection of 'bitons' bound by a superstrong
interaction mediated by neutral massive vector gluons with photon quantum numbers. These will not be restricted to the
core, but will tend to form a cloud around it. From a comparison of the expected gradients of strong and weak Regge
trajectories, we expect a characteristic weak interaction structure size of order 
(Greenberg and Yodh 1974). The radius of the
electron will be governed primarily by the range of the gluon interaction, so that we will have 
, that is, 
.
The most sensitive tests of possible electron structure made to date are measurements on 
and 
reactions. Data for 
elastic scattering set a lower limit of about 
(Beron et al. 1974; Richter 1974) on the cutoff parameter 
in the
electron form factor
corresponding to an upper bound of about 
for the
electron radius. The contribution of internal structure to 
is roughly
proportional to 
, so that we expect
if the electron core has similar interactions to those of the nucleon. Hence an extended electron with a radius 
is consistent with the data.
At low energies, photons couple to the electron via its gluon cloud (Fig. 1a), and 
appears pointlike because of the high gluon mass and the large superstrong
interaction coupling constant. Similarly, photons couple to the nucleon via its vector meson cloud, but here the
departure of the form factors from unity is quicker, because of the low 
mass and the comparative weakness of the strong interaction.
Since gluons interact superstrongly, they should not be immune to the strong interaction (hadrons undergo weak
interactions), so that they couple to hadronic states with photon quantum numbers (Fig. 1b). As any gluon-hadron vertex
will be strong, it must obey strong interaction selection rules, and thus we should assign more quantum numbers to the
gluon. We take 
and 
, although 
and 
would also have been a possible choice. Hence gluons couple to the one-particle states
and 
, and interactions
such as 
and 
are
forbidden.
