Career studying loop quantum gravity

[dEdt]

What are the chances that a guy can get a graduate position studying LQG, and a job after that?

 

[AlexES16]

What are the chances that a guy can get a graduate position studying LQG, and a job after that?

Hello bro, i had a similar question, but was more like in which career i can do research in photovoltaic cells and how to make them better. The best answer for me was physics and I think physics is the best option for you obviusly. Now i came with this, you have to enjoy the road don't wait to get there, do extremely well in the career, straight As, be social so you can get some contacts and enjoy a career in physics.

To study LQG most be a especialization in theoretical physics, yes a MS and Phd in Theoretical Physics will do.

PS: I really don't know to much physics but i think this helps and is somewhat correct and i also hope that somebody answer better this question to you.

Cya later dude

 

[fasterthanjoao]

What are the chances that a guy can get a graduate position studying LQG, and a job after that?

This is a crazily broad question, there are so many variables. But I would say the chances are: lower than most other graduate subjects and chances of actually getting a permanent faculty position? Approximately zero. But then, this is the same with a lot of academic research positions - to get permanent work can be extremely difficult.

 

[fasterthanjoao]

To study LQG most be a especialization in theoretical physics, yes a MS and Phd in Theoretical Physics will do.

PS: I really don't know to much physics but i think this helps and is somewhat correct and i also hope that somebody answer better this question to you.

It's probably not a good idea for you to dish out advice to others yet when you haven't been through the process yourself!

Saying a "MS and PhD will do" is true in that a PhD is the absolute minimum requirement for research positions, but there are lots of people with PhDs are hardly any jobs (when you narrow it down to a specific topic, if you'll just take any job as a PhD grad then you'll get one without much of a problem).

 

[marcus]

What are the chances that a guy can get a graduate position studying LQG, and a job after that?

Strangely enough, the job market has been looking pretty good in LQG lately. In terms of proportions. There seem to be a reasonable number of postdoc and junior faculty positions in relation to the number of Loop PhDs.
But this does not automatically translate into good news for you. A lot depends on details, the sample size is small, it's hard to look into the future, and so on.

Part of the reason the career picture looks good is that the original numbers (grad students getting PhD in Loop, and other kinds of nonstring QG) are small. It is not that there are a lot of Loop job-openings in absolute terms---just relative to the (small) number of Loop PhDs ready to fill the openings.

I think too that because of factors like massive popularization of string (Greene-books, TV series) the Loop community has probably been self-selective for strong motivation and mental independence. The young people we are seeing now only took that path because willing and able to ignore hype and buck trend.

From what I can see the young LQG people coming up are often of the sort that produce a number of research papers while they are still PhD students. They often seem skilled enough to be at home in different fields of theoretical physics and with different mathematical methodology. They are in LQG by choice.

Most of the young people I see now getting postdoc and junior faculty jobs have spent some time in France, Germany, at Penn State, or at Warsaw. It's a small community and there is a limited number of doorways. That's how it looks to me anyway. They tend to be people who have worked with Rovelli, Thiemann, Ashtekar, or Lewandowski, or with those peoples' students.

Perimeter Institute in Canada is a great place---terrific bunch of people, but they all came from somewhere else. Maybe I wasn't watching but I didn't notice them raising a crop of homegrown Loop PhDs at the University of Waterloo (UoW) where Perimeter is located. John Barrett at University of Nottingham has great LQG postdocs doing important research, but they seem to come from other places. I don't know of many home-grown Nottingham PhDs. Could be missing some.

If anybody seriously wants to know, I could make a scorecard. Where the Loop hires were during the past 3 or 4 years and where the young people taking the jobs got their PhDs.
My impression, without carefully keeping count, is that you should have worked with Rovelli (at Marseille France). Or with Thiemann (was at Berlin/now at Erlangen.) Or with Abhay Ashtekar at Penn State. Or with Lewandowski at Warsaw. And Abhay's PhDs tend to postdoc with Rovelli or Thiemann.

There are LQG groups being built up in a number of places. Lyon France, Louisiana State, Morelia Mexico, Sydney Australia, University of Forida, Beijing, Haverford College...and more. But the people I see taking jobs in these smaller or newer places tend to be PhDs from a small core.

The picture I have in mind is of a sort of "diaspora". A spreading out from mainly three central locations. You can get an impression if you look at the Google map of LQG research locations. The map shows some 25-30 places there are now one or more people doing Loop-related research. Like Hamburg Germany, or UBC Vancouver, or UC Davis.

I don't see LQG as a settled career path. I see it more as a kind of "uprising" by a handful of activists, any of whom could have successful careers in some larger more established fields of theoretical physics. As such, I would not advise anyone unless I knew them and their situation---it is more a case of who gets bitten by the bug.

To get a taste, try these papers (they are not beginner tutorials, they are the current state in condensed top level survey.)

http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.1780
http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.1939
(also for cosmology could look at http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.3483 )

There are online videos of LQG talks at the Perimeter archive "pirsa.org".
I have a bunch of links that are sometimes useful here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2904073#post2904073
It has a link to the Google map way down at the bottom of the list.

 

[AlexES16]

It's probably not a good idea for you to dish out advice to others yet when you haven't been through the process yourself!

Saying a "MS and PhD will do" is true in that a PhD is the absolute minimum requirement for research positions, but there are lots of people with PhDs are hardly any jobs (when you narrow it down to a specific topic, if you'll just take any job as a PhD grad then you'll get one without much of a problem).

Thats why i said in the PS that i really don't know...

 

[LAHLH]

Marcus you seem to know an awful lot about LQG, do you mind me asking if you are a PhD student or postdoc yourself? (just curious)

If anybody seriously wants to know, I could make a scorecard. Where the Loop hires were during the past 3 or 4 years and where the young people taking the jobs got their PhDs.

This would actually be interesting if you have the time.

 

[marcus]

Marcus you seem to know an awful lot about LQG, do you mind me asking if you are a PhD student or postdoc yourself? (just curious)
...

I'm a retired mathematician. I don't do QG research. I read papers I think are interesting and watch the scene. So everything I say about the community is based on appearances seen from outside. No inside knowledge.

I'm lazy enough that I don't want to put in the work to get detail on the hiring picture. My memory is not great and it would take work. I doubt there is a serious interest or any need for it. Off the top of my head I'll mention some things that got my attention.

Engle to Florida (Ash. Phd, Rov. postdoc, jr. fac)
Girelli to Sydney (Rov. Phd?, now postdoc, Aussies want Loop?)
Oriti to Potsdam (Loll postdoc, now indep. with funds to build a team of young researchers)
Dittrich to Potsdam (Thiem Phd, Perim. postd, now indep. with funds to build a small ~3 person team)
Thiemann to Erlangen (faculty, new program, with funds for several PhD students and postdocs)
Chiou to Beijing (Ashtekar postdoc, not sure what position at Beijing)
Sahlmann to Karlsruhe (Thiem. Phd, Ash. postdoc, Loll?, jr. fac.)
Corichi to Morelia (Ash. postdoc, now faculty and building a group )
Livine to Lyon (Rov. Phd?, Perimeter postdoc, jr. fac, now has his own postdoc/Phd student(s))
Giesel to LSU (Thiemann PhD?, Potsdam postdoc, jr. fac.)
Singh to LSU (Ash. postdoc, Perimeter postdoc., jr. fac.)

If you look at Rovelli's website he has a CV where he says what his former PhD students are doing. High success rate. As I recall, over a dozen names that we could add to the above list. I won't bother since the list of Rovelli Phd's and where they are is online.

I copied the GOOGLE MAPS list here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2845915#post2845915
and there is a link to the original google map list.
I am saying "jr. fac." where the google maps list says "permanent". I'm not sure of quite a bit of this. I didn't realize that Singh had a permanent appointment at LSU. I thought he was still postdoc at Perimeter.
Except for Thiemann and Corichi,everybody on the list is young---going from postdoc to their first permanent position. The thing with Thiemann is interesting because he was at Potsdam quite a while but now they set up a new QG program at Erlangen which he now directs. The establishment of new centers for QG research.
Sahlmann is also setting up a QG program at somewhere called "Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics" in Korea.
What seems to be going on is not only that existing outfits are hiring young people to fill a fixed number of slots, but that the number of slots is increasing. We see startup of new QG research groups, new centers. More institutions getting involved.

Without considerable labor I can't verify and make solid statistics. I only have my impressions of watching for 5 years or so.

Maybe someone with additional information would like to correct or add to the list.

 

[dEdt]

Thanks a lot Marcus for very thorough and informative posts!

 

[LAHLH]

Thanks Marcus, very interesting. Does seem very close knit community, and very hard to get a foot into unless you are a student of a big name like Rovelli, Theimann.

What about a student of something slightly related to LQG, say QFT in curved spacetimes? I find this area quite interesting, and wonder if this would provide one with more realistic job opportunities. Would you happen to know any groups that would be studying this kind of thing? and if indeed this would be a more hopeful career prospect

 

[dEdt]

Actually, I have one last question, based partly on LAHLH's comment.

I'm a second year undergrad; what can I do to help me get into a graduate program working with one of these "big names", like Rovelli or whomever? I think my grades are strong, but I don't know how I can distinguish myself based on research experience, given that I don't consider myself qualified enough at the moment to help with any theoretical work my professors might be doing.

 

[twofish-quant]

What are the chances that a guy can get a graduate position studying LQG, and a job after that?

Getting into graduate school to study LQG is rather straightforward. Just apply to a graduate school with faculty interested in it, and you have a position.

Getting a permanent faculty position and post-doc is painfully difficult. The fact that you have a single post that lists all of the positions in the topic should tell you something. However, one might be able to "pull an Einstein" and get a position at some modern equivalent of the Swiss Patent office.

 

[twofish-quant]

I'm a second year undergrad; what can I do to help me get into a graduate program working with one of these "big names", like Rovelli or whomever? I think my grades are strong, but I don't know how I can distinguish myself based on research experience, given that I don't consider myself qualified enough at the moment to help with any theoretical work my professors might be doing.

Nothing in particular. Just your standard, "I want to get into graduate school" things. Also you probably will have more luck if you don't target any particular professor. What happens is that whether or not a professor has an opening or not depends on a lot of random factors, and you'll be doing fine if you work with any prof that is actively working on the topic.

What tends to happen is that these topics are worked on by small groups, so as long as you have a dissertation advisor that is working in the field, you'll end up interacting with the big names. It's very likely that you'll have some big name on your dissertation committee, and if they aren't in the university that you are a student at, you'll interact with them at conferences.

The other thing is that graduate school is the time in which you start becoming a big name yourself. If you work with your advisor to author original and interesting papers, when when it comes post-doc time, people will want to work with you.

 

[twofish-quant]

Thanks Marcus, very interesting. Does seem very close knit community, and very hard to get a foot into unless you are a student of a big name like Rovelli, Theimann.

It's actually not. All research groups are close knit communities where everyone knows everyone else, and it's very easy to get into the "club." There are probably no more than about 1000 people on the planet that can even understand the math under discussion, and probably no more than about 50 people that are keeping up with the latest research.

Around second or third year of graduate school, you'll be at that level, and at that point if you ask someone a very technical question, you'll get a response. Something that you should be aware of is that no one will formally ask you to join the club. One of the mistakes that I think I made when I was a graduate student was that I kept waiting for someone to invite me to talks and conferences, and it took me a while to realize that I was expected to invite myself.

What about a student of something slightly related to LQG, say QFT in curved spacetimes?

Everything is related to everything else. Also keep in mind that God has some influence on this. If God has set up the world so that it operates under LQG, then it's worth studying. If it so happens that God has decided that the universe doesn't work with LQG, then it's not.

I find this area quite interesting, and wonder if this would provide one with more realistic job opportunities.

Standard disclaimer. Don't expect to get a full time research position on this. There are probably no more than one or two open positions each year. On the other hand, this looks like something that is amenable to someone doing what Einstein did when he couldn't get a job.

Would you happen to know any groups that would be studying this kind of thing? and if indeed this would be a more hopeful career prospect

Go into Los Alamos Preprints database. Pull up papers and see where people work.

As far as the jobs go. The magic google term is "rumor mill"

http://www.freewebs.com/heppostdoc/

 

[twofish-quant]

One thing to note, and this fact is of general interest to anyone applying to graduate school.

You will note that the big names in LQG are not the usual big names that you think about when "top school" gets mentioned. There are sociological reasons for that.

 

[dEdt]

Thanks

 

[hadsed]

There are sociological reasons for that.

Could you please elaborate?

 

[twofish-quant]

Could you please elaborate?

Yes. As one of the other posters mentioned, people that study loop quantum gravity are revolutionary upstarts, and if LQG happens to be the right approach, it means that the string theory approach that people have been trying to use since the late-1970's is wrong and a waste of time. This means that people that study LQG tend not to get good receptions in the established big name universities where string theory is strong. They again, it may be that the string theorist were right all along.

So what you can do is to find some no-name university and establish a research group there.

One other thing is psychology. People that are interested in doing original, creative work often just don't care that they work in a big name university. If you are proud of your research, why should you care whether you work at Harvard or North Podunk? You do need a group of peers to critique and provide emotional support, but that's not hard to find.

People that do want the brand are a lot less likely to go against the crowd. If you really, really want a job at Harvard, you have to do physics the way that Harvard people do it (not so say that there is anything wrong with it). If you don't care about working for Harvard, then it's easier to say "screw Harvard."