Materials

These are the learning materials I have and will be using. Since I've been studying this stuff for a little bit I know a little about them. In no particular order:

Aitchison and Hey, Gauge Theories in Particle Physics

For some reason I was intimidated by the title, but this is an excellent book to get your feet wet with. Focuses on the conceptual parts more than the math and therefore it often leaves you hanging as far as believing what you are writing. I'd say start any topic here and don't get hang up on anything that is not clear or not mathematically solid. You'll then be in a good position to understand the more rigorous texts. Aitchison also mantains solutions and errata on his site.

Griffiths, Introduction to Elementary Particles

If only everyone would write like Griffiths! This is a bit superficial, but it is also a good way to get your feet wet. Since it is an undergrad book it is a good place if you don't want to deal with some of the math.

Peskin and Schroeder, An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory

The industry standard. The canonical. Not too friendly, but friendlier than others. You have to read this.

Srednicki, Quantum Field Theory a draft available online

Excellent book. I think this will become the canonical and industry standard. Very friendly and in full depth.

Maggiore, A Modern Introduction to Quantum Field Theory

Also excellent. Not too friendly and very economical. This one reads slow but whenever you find lack of rigor somewhere come here. Its approach is first all the prereqs then the qft. As opposed to most of the others which try to bring in the classical field theory and group theory as needed along the way. Has all the solutions to the problems. This is my favorite so far.

Zee, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell

It has been recommended to me by many. I briefly tried to read it during the summer and didn't get very far. It seems like an excellent book, but don't let the friendly tone lead you to think that it is an easy one.

Polchinski's course at UCSB, he follows Srednicki. Fall (no winter!) Srping.

Plan (canal? panama? am I man enough?)

As for the plan, it goes as follows.

Before you open any of the above (except the first two) make sure:

• You know special relativity inside and out. I read and these more or less from cover to cover, did most of the problems and can vouch for them: Rindler, Introduction to Special Relativity and Woodhouse, Special Relativity. If you are feeling more remedial, read the relevant appendix in Aitchison & Hey and the chapter in Griffiths.
• You are comfortable with complex functions and know contour integration. I read most of the first 7 chapters of Brown, Complex Variables and Applications. Also made sure to do a few problems along the way. It is now one of my favorite math books.
• You understand Green's Functions. I was remedial about this and only read the appendix in Aitchison and Hey combined with whatever I know from other places (which is not much).
• You are familiar with the very basics of groups and representations. Probably Cornwell 1,2 and 4 would be good, but I just picked this stuff up by osmosis during my math major days.

After the prereqs the first part of the roadmap is more or less as follows:

1. Griffiths Cp 2,3,6,(7). You can probably do this in one or two sittings. Pay attention to chapter 6 to make sure you can at least evaluate Feynman diagrams when thrown at you. Speaking of that, peak into chapter 7, at least the first few sections of it.
2. Srednicki 1 and 2 doing all the problems.
3. Aitchison and Hey 1 - 7 doing most of the problems in parallel with Zee I1-I7. Chapter 9 of Maggiore may come in handy here, too.
4. Peskin 2 doing all the problems
5. Maggiore (1), 2, 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 doing all the relevant problems
6. Zee I8-I11
7. Peskin 3
8. Maggiore 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 4 doing all problems
9. Peskin 4 doing all problems
10. Maggiore 5 and 6 doing all problems
11. Zee II

The hope is that this will prepare one to study QED in gory detail and full rigor.

I know I want to also incorporate Srednicki and Polchiski's class. I think I will do this in parallel with all of the above.

I anticipate that all of the above will be a solid 2 to 3 months of more than half-time studying. I mean 20 to 30 hours a week for 8 to 10 weeks.

At the time of writing I've only executed the prerequisites 1,2 and less than half of 3 above. Most likely this plan will get revised, I will post something more polished in retrospect at some point.

After reading Smolin's book I became a interested in the Perimeter Institute. PI seems to be like one heck of a place to be at! That's not what spiked my interest, though, but rather how it was formed. In a nutshell, a rich startup CEO decided that he would like to contribute to science by starting an institute for theoretical physics, so he donated the cash and hired an executive director. Five years later we have PI.

To do experimental physics one needs a lot of things. Particularly, one needs large sums of money to buy and develop all kinds of technology to meet the demands of the next experiment. This in turn drives technology and is good for the economy so we like to do it. Theoretical physics is quite a bit different. Other than an office, internet connection, plenty of paper, chalkboard and writing utensils one only needs a salary to pay for food, rent and necessities. It is a much cheaper endeavor. Nonetheless, it is harder to get funding to pursue theoretical research because the return of the investment if not null is always less explicit and usually takes longer to arrive. But, if CEOs or anyone else are willing to donate to the cause, we might as well try to make that money go as far as possible. If this is the number one priority then setting up institutes such as PI in the States or Canada seems to make little sense.

More apt scenarios would be countries where the cost of living is a fraction of that in the US. This seems doable largely because the internet exists. Geographic proximity used to have a definite advantage, but the internet is maturing to the point where one can exclusively use the internet to communicate with peers about technical matters. See here (the comments section), for some discussion on the matter. It seems physical proximity is losing value quickly and may even be at a point where its value is small compared with other factors.

A back of the envelope calculation tells me that one can potentially cut the costs of running a theoretical institute by a factor of 2 or 3 by setting it up in Bolivia. (I mostly used Bolivia as my example as I have some real feel for the cost of living and that of services down there). A brief discussion with Kunal and Nikhil tells me that in India the same calculation would yield a factor of 4 or 5. India, of course, seems to be a much better choice of location based on the fact that the education system (e.g. IITs) seems to be top notch over there -- I know I argued that physical proximity could be of little value, but perhaps we can have both.

Off the top of my head I can think of a couple of reasons why we don't seem to be doing this type of thing just yet. The first, government money. In the case of PI, for example, about half the money is from the Canadian government and their desire to promote science in Canada. This seems to rule out places like Bolivia. But perhaps not places like India. (Is India is the only place like this?)

The other reason is that it may be hard to convince academics to go to relocate to a different continent in order to pursue science. But, given the job market in theoretical physics, this seems to be the easier of the battles.

After a little bit of a silence blogging is back in style in Rigoland.

While reading Smolin's book I stumbled upon the passage in which he talks about how physics students are discouraged by the lack of interesting subjects early on and how at his school they had quantum physics as a freshman class. Smolin makes a good point that most of what is taught in our freshman classes is usually what students have seen in high school and it seems very boring. It is boring on two accounts: The subjects are never "cool" ones such as black holes, quantum physics, cosmology, etc. Secondly, the subjects are never too technical. For example, a rigorous treatment of Newtonian mechanics could be done at a freshman level (not boring), but students are made to solve inclined-plane problems instead (boring).

One thing that I think that is crucial to the overdue scientific revolution Smolin talks about in his book is a revision of how we teach physics at the undergraduate level. Not only in what we teach but in how we do it. In my experience, and I think that this is true for most of my peers trained in US institutions, the way we were taught was as if we weren't ready to learn. The overall attitude being we'll tell you in grad school. This has been doubly frustrating now after encountering the attitude of you should have learned all this in undergrad. I can understand where this comes from: physics requires quite a bit of math. However, me and I think my peers also wish more math had been taught math by the physicists.

Smolin's book never talks about the possible inadequacies of undergrad education (perhaps for good reason), which was a bit disappointing for me. Maybe it will get me to finish the essay I've been writing about this subject some day...

I don't know how is it that I didn't find Cosmic Variance earlier. It is one gem of a blog. No, it is not just geeky science stuff, though it is run by five theoretical physicists so, you know...

Anyways, today I found this. It does bring about a very good point: for some reason people seem to think that learning basic science and math is relatively unimportant but that everyone -- or at least everyone who we call educated -- must know basic history, literature and other humanities. Our appreciation of math and science needs to be elevated to the same status as the other subjects.

Let me clarify what I mean by basic science and math. I don't mean what people typically learn in high school or even in college "math" and "science" classes for non-majors. The math taught in high school is to math what learning to read and write is to literature and something similar can be said about science. I mean that people should have some basic understanding of the important theories and ideas of science. For example, understand what the "big bang" is and how do we "know" that things most likely worked out that way. For another, people should have a basic understanding of a chemical reaction and the second law of thermodynamics (someone once said this is roughly equivalent to having read Hamlet). They should know that their computer is not a magical thing that understands them but just a machine which can be in a lot of states which are meaningful to the person looking at it and that the complexity of this machine is quite astounding. Some may say that this is all possible without math. I disagree. Mathematics is the language in which all this is expressed and therefore people should understand basic math. No, not just how to multiply fractions, mathematicians don't just sit around multiplying really big numbers. Quite a bit, huh? And those are just some examples.

But hey, Shakespeare takes a bit of work to read and so does Virginia Woolf and there is quite a bit to be gained by understanding all that is packed into their works. Much like there is something to be gained in learning 20th century history or what Freud thought about the way we think and those also take a bit of work. I find that many scientists feel this way about the subjects they don't specialize in, but it seems that only scientists care about science. It is utterly unacceptable that an academic doesn't know the difference between friction and impact. I do agree, though, that string theorists may not be the best choice when it comes to teaching freshman physics!

Thanks Zack, for pointing me to the excellent essay.

Horgan has many good points. Especially the one about diminished returns. Even if we experimentally detected extra dimensions or could verify what dark matter is, does it really matter all that much? To us who like this stuff, sure. Will it change the world the way QM did? Not so sure. But, I guess you never know. I still believe, though, that there are enough problems scientists care about to keep us busy discovering stuff for a few decades at least.

Secondly, I agree with the 'technological evangelists' that science is headed towards application. We know the rules of the game now, time to start playing. I think the possibilities here are endless. They may not be the ones we originally thought of (e.g. nuclear fusion) but certainly there are exciting things out there that still need a lot of work. Hey... maybe we'll get a quantum computer in the mid-future and its computing power will lead to some breakthroughs about the nature of the universe.

So is science over? Not quite yet, but we may be getting there.