Papers · William Alexander Aldred

The Second String: TP-3's Pre-Registration, Paid on a Second System

Published October 29, 2026 · Zenodo · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23779866

About this paper

In Closed Accounts (TP-3) string breaking was priced in the units the string sets for itself: with σ ≈ 0.18 GeV² and a breaking radius of 1.2–1.4 fm, the dimensionless product came out at √σ·r_break ≈ 2.80, inside a band of 2.580–3.010 built from the radius range alone. One system gave that number — and a threshold is not one system’s number, so the figure was filed as a pre-registration instead of a result. This paper pays that filing. The second system is stated before any arithmetic: lattice QCD with N_f = 2+1 dynamical flavours, the N200 ensemble of Bulava and collaborators, where the string tension and the breaking radius come out of one fit to one ensemble; in lattice units the spacing cancels, and the product is √σ·r_c = 2.883(23). It lands in the filed band. The analog hardens one grade, to CONSTRAINS, and no further. Printed beside the result at the same size: the same ensemble’s strange channel sits at 3.044(24), just past the band’s top edge — the product moves when the created pair gets heavier, so what repeats is a light-channel number, not a constant of nature.

Paper 45 of 95 in the published register. The full text is published on Zenodo under a permanent DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23779866.

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