Thomas Dent
May10-04, 07:22 AM
<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>Lubos Motl <motl@feynman.harvard.edu> wrote in message\n\n> Everyone who has something to\n> say is invited to create an account there, and contibute and edit. Let me\n> enumerate a couple of pages (this list is not complete) that I started\n> there:\n>\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Strominger\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumrun_Vafa\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoke_Sen\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Maldacena\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_symmetry\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_field_theory\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomy\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotic_string\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_string\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_string\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-theory\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_independence\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conifold\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon_condensation\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsteinian_manifold\n> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_superstring_revolution\n>\n> All the best,\n> Lubos\n\nLubos, you are too modest. Some of those articles are long enough to\nbe regular encyclopedia entries, not "stubs".\n\nBut I don\'t think you are such an expert on ancient history -\nspecifically, the history of Higgs. Of course you mean to say it gives\nmass to all *elementary* particles - not, for example, the proton.\n\n[Moderator\'s note: Yes, absolutely, thank you. An infinite\nroom for improvements. LM]\n\nMost of the description you have is just spontaneous\nsymmetry-breaking, done by Landau-Ginzburg (1950) in condensed matter\nand Nambu, Goldstone etc. in relativistic field theory. The problem\nHiggs was working on (also Brout-Englert and Guralnik-Hagen-Kibble),\nwas a particle physics one, how to get a massive vector boson, i.e. to\nsolve the "problem of massless particles". Anderson, the condensed\nmatter specialist, pointed out that this occurs in superconductors,\nbut of course nonrelativistically. In fact, Brout-Englert beat Higgs\nby a few weeks, but since they didn\'t go and visit Harvard, Princeton,\netc. and publicise their result, and also since their PRL paper is\nslightly more technical (3 pages as against Higgs\' 1.5 pages), they\nhave somewhat faded from history. The idea of Higgs was not the\nsymmetry-breaking potential, but specifically the coupling to the\nvector. Of course, you cannot couple a vector to a real field with a\nZ2 symmetry-breaking potential.\n\nOf course, nowadays "Higgs" is a codeword for anything to do with SSB,\nbut this generalization is bad history, especially considering that\nNambu, Goldstone, Brout, Englert, Anderson, etc. are still alive.\n\nHistorically, there is also the matter of the Higgs boson, "predicted"\nby Higgs in a single sentence: "incomplete multiplets of scalar and\nvector bosons" - which he added because the referee didn\'t think the\npaper would be interesting enough to publish without any prediction of\nnew physics.\n\nYou will now tell me to go and write it up in the Wikipedia entry...\nand rightly so.\n\n[Moderator\'s note: Please go and write it up in the Wikipedia\nentry. You can also add new entries. I recommend you to create\nan account over there. LM]\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form"> View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>Lubos Motl <motl@feynman.harvard.edu> wrote in message
> Everyone who has something to
> say is invited to create an account there, and contibute and edit. Let me
> enumerate a couple of pages (this list is not complete) that I started
> there:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Strominger
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumrun_Vafa
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoke_Sen
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Maldacena
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_symmetry
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_field_theory
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomy
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotic_string
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_string
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_string
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-theory
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_independence
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conifold
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon_condensation
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsteinian_manifold
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_superstring_revolution
>
> All the best,
> Lubos
Lubos, you are too modest. Some of those articles are long enough to
be regular encyclopedia entries, not "stubs".
But I don't think you are such an expert on ancient history -
specifically, the history of Higgs. Of course you mean to say it gives
mass to all *elementary* particles - not, for example, the proton.
[Moderator's note: Yes, absolutely, thank you. An infinite
room for improvements. LM]
Most of the description you have is just spontaneous
symmetry-breaking, done by Landau-Ginzburg (1950) in condensed matter
and Nambu, Goldstone etc. in relativistic field theory. The problem
Higgs was working on (also Brout-Englert and Guralnik-Hagen-Kibble),
was a particle physics one, how to get a massive vector boson, i.e. to
solve the "problem of massless particles". Anderson, the condensed
matter specialist, pointed out that this occurs in superconductors,
but of course nonrelativistically. In fact, Brout-Englert beat Higgs
by a few weeks, but since they didn't go and visit Harvard, Princeton,
etc. and publicise their result, and also since their PRL paper is
slightly more technical (3 pages as against Higgs' 1.5 pages), they
have somewhat faded from history. The idea of Higgs was not the
symmetry-breaking potential, but specifically the coupling to the
vector. Of course, you cannot couple a vector to a real field with a
Z2 symmetry-breaking potential.
Of course, nowadays "Higgs" is a codeword for anything to do with SSB,
but this generalization is bad history, especially considering that
Nambu, Goldstone, Brout, Englert, Anderson, etc. are still alive.
Historically, there is also the matter of the Higgs boson, "predicted"
by Higgs in a single sentence: "incomplete multiplets of scalar and
vector bosons" - which he added because the referee didn't think the
paper would be interesting enough to publish without any prediction of
new physics.
You will now tell me to go and write it up in the Wikipedia entry...
and rightly so.
[Moderator's note: Please go and write it up in the Wikipedia
entry. You can also add new entries. I recommend you to create
an account over there. LM]
> Everyone who has something to
> say is invited to create an account there, and contibute and edit. Let me
> enumerate a couple of pages (this list is not complete) that I started
> there:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdS/CFT
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Strominger
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumrun_Vafa
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoke_Sen
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Maldacena
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_symmetry
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_field_theory
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomy
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotic_string
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_string
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_string
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-theory
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_independence
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conifold
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon_condensation
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsteinian_manifold
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_superstring_revolution
>
> All the best,
> Lubos
Lubos, you are too modest. Some of those articles are long enough to
be regular encyclopedia entries, not "stubs".
But I don't think you are such an expert on ancient history -
specifically, the history of Higgs. Of course you mean to say it gives
mass to all *elementary* particles - not, for example, the proton.
[Moderator's note: Yes, absolutely, thank you. An infinite
room for improvements. LM]
Most of the description you have is just spontaneous
symmetry-breaking, done by Landau-Ginzburg (1950) in condensed matter
and Nambu, Goldstone etc. in relativistic field theory. The problem
Higgs was working on (also Brout-Englert and Guralnik-Hagen-Kibble),
was a particle physics one, how to get a massive vector boson, i.e. to
solve the "problem of massless particles". Anderson, the condensed
matter specialist, pointed out that this occurs in superconductors,
but of course nonrelativistically. In fact, Brout-Englert beat Higgs
by a few weeks, but since they didn't go and visit Harvard, Princeton,
etc. and publicise their result, and also since their PRL paper is
slightly more technical (3 pages as against Higgs' 1.5 pages), they
have somewhat faded from history. The idea of Higgs was not the
symmetry-breaking potential, but specifically the coupling to the
vector. Of course, you cannot couple a vector to a real field with a
Z2 symmetry-breaking potential.
Of course, nowadays "Higgs" is a codeword for anything to do with SSB,
but this generalization is bad history, especially considering that
Nambu, Goldstone, Brout, Englert, Anderson, etc. are still alive.
Historically, there is also the matter of the Higgs boson, "predicted"
by Higgs in a single sentence: "incomplete multiplets of scalar and
vector bosons" - which he added because the referee didn't think the
paper would be interesting enough to publish without any prediction of
new physics.
You will now tell me to go and write it up in the Wikipedia entry...
and rightly so.
[Moderator's note: Please go and write it up in the Wikipedia
entry. You can also add new entries. I recommend you to create
an account over there. LM]