The Trouble with Physics-Woit's review

[Kea]

I don't see anything less than a 150 page book deriving the standard model.

I disagree. This is where the fancy maths really does mean something. The simple geometry of Baratin-Friedel can be described in about 30 pages, and a translation into category theory can be made even shorter.

 

[ZapperZ]

Hi ZapperZ

I can't say that I've read the books, or any of the interviews, but personally I agree that superconductivity is an important system. Actually, I worked in highTc experiment back in the mid80s - an exciting time. A few years after that everyone was saying that Quantum Groups would be able to explain superconductivity. I gave seminars on the subject, but all my colleagues said that something that abstract couldn't possibly be useful for physics. Then in the mid90s I got hooked on categories. By now, all my colleagues were into Quantum Groups, but they said that something as abstract as Categories couldn't possibly be useful for physics. Now...

Unfortunately, I can't claim to have kept up on developments in superconductivity. I have been to some interesting seminars on the topological phases for highTc, and find it very exciting that the phase diagram is being cleared up. Of course, theoretically things are NOT yet clear, but I have no doubt whatsoever that a working M-theory should have something to say about emergent phenomena. The nice feature of our approach to M-theory is that 'constraints' on the theory are dictated entirely by the experimental question. This means that different systems are equally fundamental, whether it's superconductors, or classical cosmology, or QFT.

Hello Kea.

It appears that our paths have some similarities. My Ph.D research was on high-Tc superconductors, specifically on tunneling spectroscopies of high-Tc superconductors (Yes, I admit it, I'm an experimentalist in a sub-forum that has barely any experimental appreciation). Furthermore, I did my postdoc on photoemission spectroscopy of high-Tc superconductors. So for the longest time, I was heavily involved in this field when I decided to get out and go into accelerator physics where my condensed matter background is actually needed in the design of a high quantum efficiency photocathode in an RF injector. So like you, I left the field for something less ... how shall I put it, ... taxing.

However, I still keep up with the field and continue to referee papers related to my earlier work. Having crossed to other fields, I realize that most people outside of condensed matter are almost totally ignorant of the importance of that field. They still think it is nothing more than "engineering", that it is simply an application of physics to make stuff. Of course, they just gasp (especially the young graduate students and postdocs) when I tell them that the Higgs model, for example, came right out of condensed matter physics.

I think that what people simply don't realize is that we gain insight into certain problems from sources we just don't anticipate. Peter Higgs found it in, of all places, a condensed matter magnetic system. A superconductor is, to me (and apparently to Mead also), the clearest indication of quantum phenomena at the macroscopic scale. It is why we see some of the most fundamental test of QM, such as the Schrödinger Cat-type states, being done using such system. I fully expect that the definitive evidence for other issues surrounding QM such as Bell-type results, will come from such system as well.

Zz.

 

[Kea]

Hi ZapperZ

It appears that our paths have some similarities. My Ph.D research was on high-Tc superconductors, specifically on tunneling spectroscopies of high-Tc superconductors.

Unfortunately, I was still a teenager when I started working in Prof Taylor's lab, so although I did quite a bit of work I never got to a PhD in it. We were making brand new YBaCuO type ceramics (from scratch with the mortar and pestle, building the lab up, figuring out which thermocouples worked best and all that) and checking out any properties we could because it hadn't been done! I also ended up doing an honours project in mechanical properties later on, but then I moved into a biomedical engineering laboratory. I agree that Theoretical Physics is sorely lacking in experimental insight these days. They even call it mathematical physics, as if that is somehow more sophisticated and relevant. I always tell everyone that I'm a Theoretical Physicist.

However, I still keep up with the field and continue to referee papers related to my earlier work.

You know, I would really appreciate it if you started a short thread here (since we are talking Beyond the SM) listing some up-to-date references that we could read to get a handle on current thinking. I regret not having kept up with it, but I actually left physics all together for quite some time and never thought I would come back to it.

Having crossed to other fields, I realize that most people outside of condensed matter are almost totally ignorant of the importance of that field.

Yes, I have observed this. When I mentioned CMP in the context of M-theory at a recent String theory conference, I was met with a number of confused frowns.

The mathematically sophisticated but physically minded Microsoft people have thought a bit about this. See for example Freedman et al. in
http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0307511