Opening details

The new idea came about as a result of studying string theory and the two physicists’ attempts to better describe the collisions of elementary particles. Their efforts were never directed at finding a different way to represent the number pi. “In quantum theory, we worked on high-energy physics and tried to develop a model with fewer, more precise parameters to understand how particles interact. We were very excited when we found a new way to look at the number pi,” says Aninda Sinha of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), who co-authored the new paper with theoretical physicist Arnab Priya Saha.

Being a mathematical constant, The value of pi (3.14) does not changeno matter how illogical. Over time, scientists have gotten a more accurate representation of its value, reaching 105 trillion decimal places at last count.

In mathematics, a certain hypothetical series contains the components of a parameter, such as Pi, so that mathematicians can quickly deduce the value of Pi from its constituent parts. It’s like following a recipe, adding the right amount of each ingredient, and making a delicious meal. But without a recipe, you don’t know what ingredients are in a dish, how much to add, and when to add them.

Finding the right number and combination of components to represent pi has puzzled researchers since the early 1970s when they first tried to represent pi in this way, “but quickly gave up because it was too complicated,” Sinha explains. Scientists were looking for something completely different: ways to mathematically represent the interaction of subatomic particles using as few simple factors as possible.

Saha, a graduate student in the group, tackled the so-called “optimization problem” by trying to identify those interactions that lead to strange and elusive particles based on various combinations of the particles’ masses, vibrations, and a wide range of domains. chaotic movements, among other things. A tool called the Feynman diagram, which represents mathematical expressions that describe the energy exchanged between two interacting and scattering particles, helped solve the problem.

This not only provided an effective model of particle interaction that encompassed “all the fundamental properties of the interaction up to a certain energy”, but also allowed us to derive a new formula for the Pi number, which is very high. It resembles the first representation of Pi as a series, proposed by the Indian mathematician Sangamagrama Madhava in the 15th century.

At this stage, these results are purely theoretical but may have some practical applications.

One of the most interesting perspectives of the new representations in this article is the use of appropriate modifications of these representations to review experimental data on hadron scattering. Our new insight will also be useful in connection with celestial holography, Saha and Sinha write in their published paper, referring to an intriguing but so far hypothetical paradigm that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity using holographic projections of space.

The rest of the people can be satisfied knowing that researchers will be able to more accurately define what exactly constitutes the famous irrational number.