Monopolons II: The Proton and Hadrons
This paper investigates the magnetic sector of matter — hadrons, quarks, and the strong force — within the OFT framework. Quarks are not separate particles but inseparable structural features of one continuous electromagnetic knot. Confinement is topological: you cannot extract a quark without cutting the field. Fractional charges, the mass gap, colour charge, and SU(3) symmetry follow from the geometry. The exact topological structure of the proton is under active investigation. This is the frontier of the OFT research programme.
The proton is built from continuous electromagnetic field wound into a trefoil-like knot — the exact topology remains under active investigation. This paper derives the key properties of the magnetic sector of matter from that general structure.
The three "quarks" are not separate particles — they are inseparable structural features of one continuous trefoil-like knot. Confinement is topological: you cannot extract a quark without cutting the field. Fractional charges arise because each lobe carries one-third of the total topological flux, and the specific values +2e/3 and −e/3 are uniquely determined by the constraint that the proton carries charge +e and the neutron carries charge 0.
The mass gap is a counting constraint: the minimal stable closed-flux configuration requires three complete wavelengths. You cannot form a stable knot from fractional wavelengths.
Colour charge is the relational orientation geometry of the three bound bivector lobes, and the group SU(3) is its combinatorics. The proton spin crisis resolves as a geometric projection factor: a 1-plane electromagnetic probe measuring a 3-plane bivector system returns approximately one-third. The neutron lifetime discrepancy resolves via the Drogue Effect: magnetic coupling to vacuum fluctuations stabilises bound neutrons relative to free ones.
Both the Yang-Mills mass gap and the absence of free magnetic monopoles dissolve: the gap is a counting constraint on closed topologies, and magnetic monopoles are what we have been calling "quarks". The Standard Model's SU(3) gauge symmetry is the formal description of the trefoil-like structure's three-fold geometry, not a fundamental postulate. The "strong force" is electromagnetic field tension in wound topology — literally Maxwell stress in a trefoil-like knot at subatomic scale.
The precise topological structure of the proton is the active frontier of the OFT research programme. The mechanisms above — topological confinement, the mass gap as a counting constraint, colour as orientation geometry — are established; the exact geometry is still being determined.