Gravitational Quantum Mechanics—Implications for Dark Matter

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

A. Ernest's manuscript “Gravitational Quantum Mechanics – Implications for Dark Matter” is well written and describes a very interesting and original hypothesis. It is difficult to overestimate the impact of this hypothesis if it turns out to be confirmed. Thus, it requires special attention from both theorists and experimenters. I advise publishing this work after considering some of the criticisms, which are as follows:  

- Figure 3 and text around it (“The QDM effect increases gradually with scale but because it depends on the distribution of occupied states across the state diagram, and on how the individual eigenstate interaction rate depends on the position of the eigenstate on state diagram, it is difficult to calculate at what physical scale individual particle cross sections will be significantly different from traditionally accepted cross sections.”). – This assertion is unsatisfactory. It seems that both “the distribution of occupied states across the state diagram” and “how the individual eigenstate interaction rate depends on the position of the eigenstate on state diagram” can in principle be calculated using the formalism developed by the author. A good theory must be able to calculate or evaluate these effects, which is of fundamental importance for the reliability of any practical theory predictions. I understand that the development of appropriate theoretical and computational methods is far beyond the scope of this manuscript. However, please 1) indicate this circumstance explicitly in the text of the article; 2) Pay particular attention to this need in subsequent work.

- “At the scale of the Sun for example, the lifetimes of the highest high-?,? states are already of the order of hundreds of days, so already at this scale, it would be expected that “dark storage” of particles in the low-density exterior environment beyond the chromosphere is feasible, and could signify a detectable reduction in optical interaction cross sections beginning at this scale (high ?, ? gravitational quantum states in the solar corona region have equivalent kinetic energies similar to the corona temperature may explain how corona particles are trapped and maintained).” – Is this a good case for testing the theory? I don't see any quantitative prediction. Also I don't see a precise proposed method for testing the theory. Please state explicitly 1) a practical way to make accurate quantitative predictions, 2) the most adequate method for testing these quantitative predictions.

- “3. Calculation of Cross Section Trends for Simple Systems (Low-?,?)” – this section is really useful and illustrates the general ideas of the hypothesis well. It would be useful to illustrate in a similar way every other fundamentally important assertion of the proposed theory. However, I would like to emphasize that the development of approximate methods for calculating the parameters of quantum states for any arbitrary values of n, l is a prerequisite for the reliability of quantitative predictions of the theory. Of course, this work is beyond the scope of this manuscript. Nevertheless, indicate explicitly the fundamentally possible ways of realizing this scientific program.

- It is very important that the author offers specific scenarios for a possible experimental verification of the proposed theory. It would be very important to make accurate quantitative predictions in the future within at least one of the proposed scenarios. Only such an approach can convince experimenters to make dedicated experimental efforts.

 

- Finally, the author should eliminate some obvious typos and grammatical errors.

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

• Figure 3 and text around it (“The QDM effect increases gradually with scale but because it depends on the distribution of occupied states across the state diagram, and on how the individual eigenstate interaction rate depends on the position of the eigenstate on state diagram, it is difficult to calculate at what physical scale individual particle cross sections will be significantly different from traditionally accepted cross sections.”). – This assertion is unsatisfactory. It seems that both “the distribution of occupied states across the state diagram” and “how the individual eigenstate interaction rate depends on the position of the eigenstate on state diagram” can in principle be calculated using the formalism developed by the author. A good theory must be able to calculate or evaluate these effects, which is of fundamental importance for the reliability of any practical theory predictions. I understand that the development of appropriate theoretical and computational methods is far beyond the scope of this manuscript. However, please 1) indicate this circumstance explicitly in the text of the article; 2) Pay particular attention to this need in subsequent work.
  - “At the scale of the Sun for example, the lifetimes of the highest high-?,? states are already of the order of hundreds of days, so already at this scale, it would be expected that “dark storage” of particles in the low-density exterior environment beyond the chromosphere is feasible, and could signify a detectable reduction in optical interaction cross sections beginning at this scale (high ?, ? gravitational quantum states in the solar corona region have equivalent kinetic energies similar to the corona temperature may explain how corona particles are trapped and maintained).” – Is this a good case for testing the theory? I don't see any quantitative prediction. Also I don't see a precise proposed method for testing the theory. Please state explicitly 1) a practical way to make accurate quantitative predictions, 2) the most adequate method for testing these quantitative predictions.
• I have altered the paragraph before Figure 3, starting from line 209 onwards. Instead of “Additionally, there…”  line 209 now reads “It has been shown that…”. This new revision now goes to the end of that paragraph. Please see the attached file of changes

• - “3. Calculation of Cross Section Trends for Simple Systems (Low-?,?)” – this section is really useful and illustrates the general ideas of the hypothesis well. It would be useful to illustrate in a similar way every other fundamentally important assertion of the proposed theory. However, I would like to emphasize that the development of approximate methods for calculating the parameters of quantum states for any arbitrary values of n, l is a prerequisite for the reliability of quantitative predictions of the theory. Of course, this work is beyond the scope of this manuscript. Nevertheless, indicate explicitly the fundamentally possible ways of realizing this scientific program.

• I have replaced the introduction to section 3 with an expanded version to emphasize the importance of being able to calculate interaction rates for arbitrary n and l, and to explain how this will be undertaken in future work.
• It is very important that the author offers specific scenarios for a possible experimental verification of the proposed theory. It would be very important to make accurate quantitative predictions in the future within at least one of the proposed scenarios. Only such an approach can convince experimenters to make dedicated experimental efforts.
• I have added a paragraph to the beginning of section 6.2 to emphasize the very significant and observational definitive test for the ability of GQM to expalin the nature and origin of dark matter that can be carried now or in the near future. I have also added a sentence later in the section to specifically state the GQM prediction with low temperature, high dark matter content halos.
• I have also passed the manuscript to a commercial manuscript editing service (Ashnest Academic Editing) for checking typos and grammatical errors

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The first value of this paper is that the first 2 sections give a good brief review of the Gravitational Quantuum Mechanics (GQM) which cornerstone is the experimental proof that particles exist in gravitational quantum states formed in gravitational potential wells.

Brief review is followed by new results showing that particles within the standard model of particle physics could potentially function as “dark matter particles”. A very exiciting possibility.

I recomend publication.

Author Response

I would like to thank the referee for their time and effort in reviewing my paper. It is much appreciated. Kind regards, Dr Allan Ernest