Recent content by jasonwer

I think upper division physics can seem very pointless if you don't have a goal in mind. For example tensors can look very boring for someone just wanting to graduate but for someone wanting to do a PhD in relativity tensors will be very interesting. Cristo mentioned about planning your route...

I'm 37 and I am in a similar situation as you and have had the same thoughts as you - 12 years in IT, challenge no longer there, looking at a couple of more decades of the same work... Now I'm due to start my MSc in 2009 - preparation has been done, bank account ready, mathematics revised. So...

I realized too late that my last question was somewhat obvious. With the QFT operators given in terms of creation and annihilation operators it makes sense for the Kets to be given in terms of particle number. I spent the weekend with Mandl & Shaw (like you suggested, thanks) and it confirmed my...

Thanks again Fredrik. I can now see where I made a massive wrong assumption. I thought the field was the ket, therefore I thought the state of the system was given by the field. This led me to expect the creation and annihilation operators to act on the field (resulting in a field with more...

I should have been clearer about my (minimal) QFT background. I am part way through Weinberg chapter 2 but the canonical quantization procedure makes me uneasy - I can understand operators acting on Kets (thanks to matrix representations and linear algebra theory) but operators acting on fields...

Thanks Fredrik - I suspected such. I thought learning CFT would allow me to learn QFT along the way but it seems they are quite separate topics with just canonical quantization in common. Am I correct in this view?

I will be starting a Masters degree in physics next year - 30% of the assessment will be a thesis (review, not research). I have selected CFT as a topic and my future advisor has pointed me to Francesco's 'Conformal Field Theory' as the book to use. Francesco's book is very good but I am...

Having a map of our galaxy is like having a map of a beach that shows each sand grain - clearly impossible. Having the general shape of our 'beach' is possible. One spiral galaxy looks mostly like any other - seach for Hubble Images for some impresive photos. The best looking 'map' of our...

I'm self studying as well and occasionally need a few days (or longer) break from pushing myself. What I do is I find a math/physics book that is not for general readers (e.g. A Brief History Of Time is not chosen) but that also does not require too much concentration. 'Classic' books on...