Mathematicians Aninda Sinha and Arnab Priya Saha from the Indian Institute of Science accidentally discovered a new way to represent the mathematical constant pi (π) while studying particle collisions in quantum field theory.
Though pi’s value has not changed, their work provides an alternative series representation that expresses pi as a combination of components in a certain order and quantity. This could help extract pi values more easily from calculations involving high-energy particle scattering.
Saha was trying to optimize a model of particle interactions using fewer parameters like mass and vibration. Their use of Feynman diagrams to represent the energy exchanges unexpectedly produced a formula for pi that resembles a 15th century representation by Indian mathematician Madhava.
The new representation could have practical applications, such as reexamining experimental data on hadron scattering. It may also help connect theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity through “celestial holography”.
While theoretical for now, the findings provide a novel way of conceptualizing the composition of the irrational number pi from alternative component parts.
Source: ScienceAlert (https://www.sciencealert.com/mathematicians-accidentally-found-a-new-way-to-represent-pi)
