Braided Topology and the Emergence of Matter

Abstract

In recent years, the possibility that particles may be modelled by topological structures occurring in the discrete spacetime of certain quantum gravity theories has been investigated. We present an overview of this research program, based on a hypothetical substructure of quarks and leptons. Under appropriate dynamical rules, such topological structures are capable of interacting with each other, and we show how the ability to interact may be combined with a mapping to fermion and boson states of the Standard Model.