Many thanks for all your responses!
I connected the randomness with quantum fluctuations, which stimulate e.g. spontaneous emission. Even if QM Hamiltonian does not account for them, it's believable that the system does not remain in the stationary excited state forever, but under some...
Like M Quack said, reciprocal lattice is a mathematical structure which allows the application of analytic geometry of linear forms to coordinate systems with arbitrary bases, including the non-orthonormal bases of lattices with low symmetry. Makes many calculations possible! You can also show...
Let's say I have some simple molecule excited to higher electronic level. Is it possible that it goes back to its ground state by transferring the excitation energy into its vibrational degrees of freedom? I believe it is... what are the selection rules for such a process?
TIA
I don't understand where radioactive decay comes from. Everything I've read discusses how the environment can influence the decay (for example, neutrons in different nuclei decay with different speeds), but I couldn't find an explanation of what is the underlying cause of the decay. If the...
@Twofish-quant
Also I don't personally know of any physics Ph.D.'s that have become traders.
I know a few (maths or physics), mostly in more exotic and structured stuff.
One thing that worries me more is the "internization" of finance. Lots of people are being hired as interns...
Twofish, I don't know where you work, but for me these figures seem pretty high. In London, a starting salary for a quant in a good bank would be £50-60k, which is below $100k.
I don't think you'll ever go back to $1m salaries for quants (did quants every got paid this much, anyway? maybe your...
It is competitive but not as competitive as getting a post-doc.
Somewhat. Sometimes everything's OK and there is little stress, but when the s**t hits the fan, people lose money and get much stressed. People were *very* stressed when Lehman Brothers went bust.
Levels of stress depend a lot...
Not really. I am a credit/IR quant, I've worked in this field for a while, published a few papers on SSRN, and I am under no illusions that working in an IB is equivalent to doing scientific research. It's much more focused on practical issues, even if they do not lead to any particular insights...
If that's how things are in theoretical physics now, then what the advantage of staying in the academia? I know quite a few people who continue science after their PhD and they're not that cynical.