What Are Acceptable Topics for a Theoretical Physics Research Paper?

[santo35]

Hi people , i am an engineering sophomore. but after my undergrad i want to move into physics lane especially theoretical physics. for which i am doing ground works and building my profile ( as a non physics student , to get into good physics grad school i would need a good profile ofcourse !) ...

My level of physics now is that i have completed Special and general relativity courses onilne and kinda of got a good idea on these two (both mathematical and conceptual). i am a person who does physics through rigorous math. i am now in the level of understanding the mathamtics behind swarchild metric derivation.

Every one around me says it is good to start publishing papers. well my idea about publishing papers is that people "invent" or "discover" something and then they formally present it in a paper calling it so. but now at this stage i guess that is way of my league. but since i do need to build my profile i came up with these two topics. i just wanted to know would this be an acceptable area to write paper on
1) Complete review about how the solution of EFE turns out for a point mass in vacuum like the derivation , meaning of it and the method used
2) (this one is my own idea) - finding the condition for communication to occur between 2 points inside the photon sphere and outside the event horizon ( to begin with let's say for a swarchild black hole)

but i kinda think i need to learn a bit more math to do the second one. but i guess that would be interesting. and will 1st one get the status of writing a paper ?

Thanks for your replies

 

[Nabeshin]

Unfortunately, none of this is paper-worthy.

#1 is covered in every GR textbook. There is no need for a review article, and even if there was, it makes no sense at all for someone's first paper to be a review article. (That being said, writing a review article is a fantastic way to learn a lot for yourself, it's just not a publishable contribution).

#2 is far too trivial to be the subject of a paper. This is the kind of thing you would find on a homework set for a GR class.

 

[Vanadium 50]

If you want to become a physicist, majoring in physics will be more helpful than to publish a paper of the sort you describe (assuming you can get them published). The other thing that will help is to start reading papers; that's a good first step to writing one.

 

[atyy]

#1 is covered in every GR textbook. There is no need for a review article, and even if there was, it makes no sense at all for someone's first paper to be a review article. (That being said, writing a review article is a fantastic way to learn a lot for yourself, it's just not a publishable contribution).

I'm not a physicist, so am not qualified to comment on the main question. But wouldn't papers like http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.3189 and http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.5089 indicate that this is still a research topic?

 

[Nabeshin]

I'm not a physicist, so am not qualified to comment on the main question. But wouldn't papers like http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.3189 and http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.5089 indicate that this is still a research topic?

Perhaps I misunderstood the original suggestion, but I took it to mean essentially a derivation of the Schwarzschild metric from the EFE.

As for self-forces... I'm pretty sure people are still writing papers about those even in Maxwell's theory!

 

[santo35]

thanks a lot everyone for the view, well out of curiosity , my current CGPA is 7.2 on 10 as i am doing engineering and not a physics course , when applying to universities , will my GPA affect the selection procedure ? because i find it hard to concentrate both on learning physics as well as engineering ...

 

[Vanadium 50]

Let me say it again. If you want to go into grad school in physics, you should major it it.