Compton breathing mode Left panel: an electron vortex breathing between a spinning core at 150 femtometers and its expanded partner at the reduced Compton wavelength, 386 femtometers — the fast heartbeat, a factor of about 2.6. Right panel: rotational kinetic energy and the expanded-breath energy as two complementary sinusoids that swap amplitudes every quarter period, summing to the constant rest mass energy. ħ/mₑc ≈ 386 fm Zitterbewegung r_eff ≈ 150 fm ħ/mₑc : r_eff ≈ 2.6 linear scale · femtometers contracted · all energy in rotation KE · rotation E · expanded breath sum mₑc² 0 0 T/4 T/2 3T/4 T T_C = 8.1 × 10⁻²¹ s one Compton period ⟨KE⟩ = ⟨E_breath⟩ = ½ mₑc² Mass is the RMS amplitude of this breathing mode
The electron's fast heartbeat: the vortex oscillates between a tightly-wound core at reff ≈ 150 fm and its expanded partner at the reduced Compton wavelength ħ/mec ≈ 386 fm, once per Compton period TC = 8.1 × 10⁻²¹ s. This is the Zitterbewegung — the Nambu particle/hole exchange — with energy swapping between core rotation and the expanded breath, their sum the rest mass energy. (The slow journey out to ξ ≈ 100 μm is a separate coherence-dress mode at ω₁, roughly 10⁸× slower — see the scale-separation figure.)