Grad Student deciding upon research field

[alexofander]

I'm currently a first year graduate student at a school that has research in AMO, Condensed Matter, Astrophysics and Particle physics (theoretical and experimental). I would like to conduct research over the summer but I'm having difficulty figuring out what I would like to research.

I would like to take a course on General Relativity, but otherwise Astrophysics isn't interesting enough for me.

I'm not the greatest at optics, but from undergrad optics is what I'm most familiar with. One of my former professors does research in optics, and my one internship involved building a MOKE imaging system. Currently I am assigned to an advisor who conducts research in AMO.

Condensed matter is interesting and very much applied, but I don't know if it's right for me. It's very technology-based, which I like, but I'm not sure if I want to do that for a career. We had a speaker talk about his career in industry and it sounded incredibly cut-throat, which doesn't appeal to me.

I've always been interested in learning QED and QCD and it seems that particle physics uses field theories the most. Every week we have a colloquium and often we've had particle physics speakers, which I find to be fascinating. The problem is I've never been exposed to particle physics before and I don't know if I'd like it once I start doing research. I also don't know what kind of job opportunities there'd be for me, experimental or theoretical.

As for theoretical and experimental research, I'm not sure which I would prefer. I had an internship involving an experiment and I enjoyed it, but I've never been involved in theoretical research. I enjoy doing problem sets but I don't know if this would be comparable to theoretical research.

For those of you who've been through this, could any of you offer any suggestions on how to figure out what subfield to get into?

Thank you kindly in advance for your responses.

 

[cgk]

My advice would be to stay away from astro, particle and gravity physics. The reasons are:
(1) Compared to the other areas, their potential for real world application is rather low. If you go into these branches, you don't have *any* option other than trying to get into a career in science. Any positive trait speaking for these subjects (say, learning hardcore numerics or data analysis, if you're into that) can also be found in almost all other branches of physics.
(2) Many very bright people go into these fields anyway, mainly for the social prestige. Additionally, groups are often very large, which makes it difficult to distinguish oneself from the other people. In particle physics it is common to see papers with 50 authors. This might appeal to some, but it does have drawbacks.
(3) In particle and gravity physics there was no significant progress during the last ten years, and it is not clear if this will change. There are lots of competing theories, none of which can be distinguished by (practically likely) experiments. Of course some people also begin to question whether they should care. Most of the fundamental questions which people go out to seek truth about will most likely never be answered (say, on the origin of the universe or black holes or the properties of far away star systems etc)---due to the infeasibility of experiments.

 

[arunma]

I'm a fourth year in particle astrophysics. Definitely not in any position to be giving career advice, but I can tell you what I would do if I was back in first year. I agree with cgk, stay away from astro and particle. I don't know what gravity physics is, but stay away from that too. If I were a first year again, I would only look at condensed matter groups. Personally I hate condensed matter, I think it's boring. But once you get your PhD you need to go out and look for a job, and doing what you love doesn't necessarily pay the bills. If you do condensed matter, the phase space of available jobs is way bigger. You can stay in academia if you want, or you can go work for a computer company. Or you can even start your own business, since you've got lots of hardware experience. If you're in any other field, your only two choices are to do a postdoc (and hope that you'll be one of the few PhDs who gets a tenure track job someday), or be a programmer (and if this is what you want to do, why didn't you just get a BS in computer science and save yourself six years of torture?). The way I see it, you may like something right now, but you don't know whether you'll like it by the time you're in your latter years of grad school. If you end up disliking your research, knowing that you've got a good job lined up will definitely lift your spirits. On the other hand if you do research you really love but can't get a tenure track position after two are three postdocs...well that just sucks. Condensed matter is pretty much the only area of physics with jobs outside of academia.

Now, I've heard well-meaning people on PF tell me that physics PhDs teach you how to market yourself, that a PhD isn't a guarantee of employment, and that I'm ignorant for saying that physics PhDs other than condensed matter are unemployable. I definitely don't mean to argue with those people, they're way more knowledgeable and experienced than I am. Maybe they're right and I don't know what I'm talking about. But I do know one thing. Every time my department brings in an outside colloquium speaker, we grad students get to have lunch with him. I always ask what type of job I can get after grad school if I don't want to go the academia route. The guy rattles off a bunch of possible careers with hardware or materials companies. After he's done I say "can I do this with a PhD in particle astrophysics?" The professor will then respond with a disappointed look on his face followed with something along the lines of "in that case there aren't quite so many opportunities in industry." One professor went so far as to say "my first advice would be to not major in particle astrophysics." Not so helpful, especially since I was finishing up my third year at the time.

Do take my words with a grain of salt, I'm just one grad student. Unlike most people here I haven't been out in the real world, so maybe you can get employment with a PhD in high energy or whatever. But from where I sit, it seems that condensed matter is a sure shot to a good job; everything else is iffy. So again, if I were you (and I'm not), I wouldn't touch anything outside of condensed matter with a ten foot pole.

 

[alexofander]

Thank you both for your responses.

I've had it in the back of my mind that condensed matter is, for the most part, the only field of physics that has job opportunities outside of academia but I wanted to see what other people had to say. And like I said previously, my hesitation with going into industry is the cutthroat nature of the job. Maybe this isn't the case and the people I've talked to are in the minority.

One professor I am thinking about asking to be my advisor works on building the detectors for particle accelerators, which would combine particle physics with condensed matter. At the moment I don't know how much condensed matter is involved, but I do know that his group makes the circuits and builds the detectors; I don't know if another group figures out what to use for the detector and they simply put it together. I'm hoping that there is enough condensed matter involved that I'll have the skills necessary for a job in industry if I choose that path.

 

[cgk]

That detector business sounds like a good comprimise. There are also some other fields with real world applications, say, (parts of) material science, optics, geophysics, low-temperature/vacuum physics, medical physics, and many other applied physics fields (e.g., development of specialized equipment like microscopes/electron microscopes, MRI/NMR,ESR scanners, all kinds of detectors/sensors, etc).

Also note that condensed matter is a HUGE field with lots and lots of sub-categories, ranging from electric arc synthesis of crystals to theoretical electronic structure methods for model systems. Basically, within it almost anyone should be able to find something to their liking.
(Note: despite my advertizing for the field, I myself am not in condensed matter, but in chemical physics).

 

[twofish-quant]

(1) Compared to the other areas, their potential for real world application is rather low. If you go into these branches, you don't have *any* option other than trying to get into a career in science. Any positive trait speaking for these subjects (say, learning hardcore numerics or data analysis, if you're into that) can also be found in almost all other branches of physics.

It depends. If you get into something that is computationally heavy (computational fluid dynamics or lattice gauge theory) you aren't going to have any problem applying skills to industry.

(3) In particle and gravity physics there was no significant progress during the last ten years, and it is not clear if this will change.

But this isn't true for cosmology or other parts of theoretical astrophysics. Also there is a lot of useful work in nuclear physics.

Most of the fundamental questions which people go out to seek truth about will most likely never be answered (say, on the origin of the universe or black holes or the properties of far away star systems etc)---due to the infeasibility of experiments.

However a lot of questions are likely to be solved in the next decade. The question of galactic evolution or how black hole magnetospheres work is something for which there has been a huge amount of progress.

 

[twofish-quant]

But once you get your PhD you need to go out and look for a job, and doing what you love doesn't necessarily pay the bills.

I've never really had a problem with that. My astrophysics Ph.D. research was on radiation hydrodynamics, and by an interesting quirk of nature it so happens that the equations of radiation hydrodynamics are pretty much the same equations that describe the time evolution of stock options.

You do need to keep one eye on the job market, but I've found that people that are inside academia tend to have very odd and incorrect notions of what is in demand.

If you're in any other field, your only two choices are to do a postdoc (and hope that you'll be one of the few PhDs who gets a tenure track job someday), or be a programmer (and if this is what you want to do, why didn't you just get a BS in computer science and save yourself six years of torture?).

I'm sorry but this is nonsense. If you are an investment bank that wants to pay $$$$ for someone to babysit their two thousand node supercomputer which handles tens of billions of dollars of transactions every evening, they are *NOT* going to hand the keys over to someone with just a bachelors, and they are going to be totally clueless when you hand them twenty pages of equations, and ask them to debug the Chomesky decomposition algorithm.

If you have six years of experience with CFD, then they may hand you the keys to the supercomputer.

 

[twofish-quant]

I've had it in the back of my mind that condensed matter is, for the most part, the only field of physics that has job opportunities outside of academia but I wanted to see what other people had to say.

I say utter nonsense. My Ph.D. is in computational theoretical astrophysics, and I've done pretty well. The only gotcha is that you have to move to NYC, London, or some major Asian financial center.

 

[alexofander]

Thanks twofish-quant. I didn't realize that the equations were so similar.

How did you go about transitioning from theoretical astrophysics to the stock market? Did you have to take more classes or did you just learn it on the job?

I've heard of people with physics PhDs going into the stock market but I never knew how they got there. Could you shed some more light on this?