Other What are you reading now? (STEM only)

[vanhees71]

Indeed, complementarity can be simply substituted by the clear mathematical statement of the uncertainty principle,
$$\Delta A \Delta B \geq \frac{1}{2} |\langle \mathrm{i} [\hat{A},\hat{B}]|.$$
$A$ and $B$ don't necessarily need to be canonically conjugated as are $x$ and $p_x$ but in the latter case it's most simply to discuss, because then $[\hat{x},\hat{p}_x]=\mathrm{i} \hbar$, and you get
$$\Delta x \Delta p_x \geq \frac{\hbar}{2},$$
which says that if a particle is prepared in a well-localized state (i.e., $\Delta x$ "small") then necessarily $\Delta p_x$ is "large". You don't need complicated philosophical arguments about "complementarity" to understand this.

 

[LittleSchwinger]

Indeed, complementarity can be simply substituted by the clear mathematical statement of the uncertainty principle...
..don't necessarily need to be canonically conjugated...

This is only out of historical interest, nothing you say is wrong of course.

Basically if you read Bohr's essays, whenever he says "Complementarity" he always means the case where the two quantities are canonically conjugate, i.e. Complementarity is the special case of the non-commutativity of canonically conjugate pairs. The definition I gave above is essentially a way of defining "canonically conjugate" without using Hamiltonian Mechanics.

It has turned out that Complementary observables are especially important in an information theoretic sense.

 

[Demystifier]

Pauli's "Handbuchartikel" is indeed a masterpiece, particularly such little gems like the argument, why time must be a parameter and not an observable.

The fun fact is that this gem is only a footnote.

 

[vanhees71]

Born's probability interpretation is also a footnote in an article about scattering theory :-).

 

[LittleSchwinger]

Reading the mathematician Michel Talagrand's excellent "What is a quantum field theory?"

If you ever wanted to deeply understand all orders perturbative renormalization this is the text.

 

[George Jones]

I just got a copy, but I am too busy to give it much attention. I hope to give it a serious go starting in April or May.

 

[LittleSchwinger]

I just got a copy, but I am too busy to give it much attention. I hope to give it a serious go starting in April or May.

You'll have a lot of fun. The renormalization isn't the only good thing. There's a very careful and detailed exploration of representing the Poincaré group, why we are lead to Dirac matrices and a proper walk-through of all the details of LSZ reduction.

 

[Demystifier]

A. Strominger, Lectures on the Infrared Structure of Gravity and Gauge Theory (Princeton, 2018)
- also available for free at https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.05448

Fascinating stuff. In particular, it looks as if large gauge transformations and large diffeomorphisms map physical states to new physically inequivalent states, both classically and quantum mechanically.

 

[Hyperfine]

Stuart Firestein, Ignorance: How It Drives Science, Oxford University Press, 2012.

 

[gleem]

I just finished "Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass" by Frank Close (2022)

A biography of Peter Higgs framed in the birth, quest, and discovery of the "Massive Boson of the Electroweak Theory"

It illustrated the inspiration, the competition, the jealousy, the cooperation, and the cross-fertilization in disciplines in scientific research. And how one's career can go from obscurity to fame.

Higgs wrote only 18 papers, nine in molecular physics and nine in quantum field theory, and only one paper in collaboration with others, his first in molecular physics. His seminal work was done in 1964. His specific prediction of the boson in 1966. His last paper was in 1976.

Only because of a postal strike and a delay in submission did a paper by Englert and Brout and one by Guralnik, Hagen, and Kibble did Higgs's papers on the "mass mechanism" beat them both. And only by quirks of circumstance did his name get attached to the now-important boson.

Although Higgs stated that he had only one original idea his work was responsible for three Nobel Prizes, his(2013), Weinberg's(1979), and 't Hooft's (1999). Another interesting tidbit is that like Higgs's work initially ignored, Weinberg's paper on the theory of leptons was cited only 4 times in its first four years although over ten thousand times after he won the Nobel Prize.

He finishes off the book with a short discussion of the possible use of the boson in cosmology and the prospects of future developments in the Standard Model.

 

[gleem]

Almost forgot that I finished. "Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality" by Frank Wilczek

From the Preface: "This is a book about fundamental lessons we can learn from the study of the physical world . . . Here I've tried to convey the central messages of modern physics as simply as possible." F. Wilczek

A blend of a review of the universe we live in, the physical laws that govern it, and the lesson we should learn from the methods that have revealed the workings of our universe and the continuing crusade to extend our knowledge.

It certainly was not what I expected. I thought Wilczek would reveal insights into helping people to understand our universe. Instead, he seems to want to use the understanding of modern physics to be born again intellectually and to liberate humankind from our personal desires and concern for only close friends and become more empathetic and less selfish.

The last third of the book was a bit of a struggle, slipping into a seemingly philosophical discussion.

 

[Hyperfine]

Just released today:

Carlo Rovelli, Anaximander: And the Birth of Science, Riverhead Books, 2023.

 

[gentzen]

Just released today:

Carlo Rovelli, Anaximander: And the Birth of Science, Riverhead Books, 2023.

First published January 1, 2005

 

[haushofer]

Currently I'm reading Dirk van Delft's biography on Martinus Veltman (in Dutch). Nice history of a not-so-easy man.

He was the supervisor of the supervisor of my PhD-supervisor, so I guess we're related.

 

[Hyperfine]

Regarding Carlo Rovelli, Anaximander: And the Birth of Science:

As one would anticipate, the discussion is historical. It is also quite philosophical. For those interested in such discussions, I recommend the book (ca. 150 pages).

 

[gleem]

Read "My Search for Ramanujan - How I learned to count" by Ken Ono and Amir D. Aczel (2015)

It is the true story of a kid (Ken Ono) crumbling under the pressure of demanding parents who drops out of high school abandoning the plan by his parents for a career in math only to recover it through the life and works of Ramanujan along with the aid of his brother and mentors to become a respected mathematician. It is a very interesting story, a story that I believe has elements that many of us have shared including rebellion, despair, depression, distraction, arrogance, and just plain foolishness.

 

[BillTre]

plan by his parents for a career in math

That's different. Usually its be a doctor or lawyer.
Where the parents mathematicians?

 

[gleem]

Where the parents mathematicians?

His father was a math professor at Johns Hopkins. Ken was a first-generation American and subject to traditional Japanese customs.

 

[martinbn]

Th book looks interesting, and I know the father (from his work, not presonaly), so i will try to get a copy. All this reminds me about an anecdote, where a mathematician was asked if he will insist that his children follow his footsteps. He replied "Of course not, there will be no pressure, they can do whatever they want to. If they want to the can do Topology, or Algebraic Geometry, or Complex analysis, or Differential Equations,..."

 

[Hyperfine]

S. Chandrasekhar, Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science, The University of Chicago Press, 1990.

The seven lectures collected in this volume present my general thoughts pertaining to the motivations in the pursuit of science and to the patterns of scientific creativity.

 

[Hyperfine]

Sin-itiro Tomonaga, The Story of Spin, The University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Fascinating. I must admit that the antiquated quantum number notation is confusing. Now, about 25% through, I have reached Pauli's introduction of his spin matrices and I feel a bit more comfortable.

 

[haushofer]

Although Higgs stated that he had only one original idea his work was responsible for three Nobel Prizes, his(2013), Weinberg's(1979), and 't Hooft's (1999).

Afaik 't Hooft and Veltman their work was independent of Higgs his work. It was only later that 't Hooft realized that he introduced the scalar field of Higgs.

 

[jasonRF]

I am reading Physical Chemistry by McQuarrie. Partially for fun, and partially so I can be a resource for a daughter that is taking online courses out of the book this summer. The applications and emphasis are interesting - definitely different than how I learned quantum from an EE department and stat mech from Reif.

It is a little surprising that the classes only require 2 semesters of calculus for the math prerequisites, since the book uses as much math as you might expect from a typical 3rd year physics or engineering class (at least in the US). The book does have some short math chapters to help fill the holes in the readers math background, but it isn’t clear if they are sufficient. I suspect that the primary way I can help my daughter with the classes is as a math tutor…

Jason

 

[Borg]

Reading A Gentle Introduction to Graph Neutral Networks - https://distill.pub/2021/gnn-intro/, while listening to Pink Floyd, on a beach in Cancun.

 

[gmax137]

"Physics the Human Adventure" by Holton & Brush
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0813529085/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Slow reading, I'm at page 200 after more than a month. But I don't dip into it every day and don't read more than one chapter at a sitting. I like this book and don't want to rush through it. It's history, with a lot of physics detail. The authors missed the advice about not including the equations - which means this is perfect, IMO.

I just now finished this book. I started some others since last December, some of which I finished. How many here read several books concurrently? Do you always finish what you start?

 

[diogenesNY]

I am always in the middle of three or four books, notwithstanding those occasional offerings that I just burn through in a day or three.

There are usually three or four more that I am in the middle of but am kind of stalled out on.... I try to go back an finish them, sometimes successfully, other times, if they are library books, I just have to bow to the inevitable and return them, planning to maybe revisit them at a later date (which I sometimes do and sometimes don't).

 

[haushofer]

I recently bought Hiroshi Yuki's "Math Girls 5" on Galois theory. It's a peculiar combination of a novel for adolescents and deepgoing math exposing Galois theory. I guess I'm done with the usual math textbooks :P

 

[Demystifier]

I recently bought Hiroshi Yuki's "Math Girls 5" on Galois theory. It's a peculiar combination of a novel for adolescents and deepgoing math exposing Galois theory. I guess I'm done with the usual math textbooks :P

The whole Math Girls series looks interesting, did you also read some others from the series?

 

[haushofer]

The whole Math Girls series looks interesting, did you also read some others from the series?

No, this is my first, but it really makes you fall in love with the subject, so probably not my last. I highly recommend it.

 

[LittleSchwinger]

Trying to read about Logic, which I never covered in much depth as a physicist. Currently on "First Steps in Modal Logic" by Sally Popkorn. I really recommend Schechter's "Classical and Nonclassical Logics: An Introduction to the Mathematics of Propositions"

 

[gentzen]

Trying to read about Logic, which I never covered in much depth as a physicist. Currently on "First Steps in Modal Logic" by Sally Popkorn. I really recommend Schechter's "Classical and Nonclassical Logics: An Introduction to the Mathematics of Propositions"

Frank Pfenning's Automated Theorem Proving Handouts are a nice easily accessable resource for many topics in Logic from a non-philosophical engineering point of view.

 

[Demystifier]

Frank Pfenning's Automated Theorem Proving Handouts are a nice easily accessable resource for many topics in Logic from a non-philosophical engineering point of view.

By engineering, do you mean applied mathematician?

 

[gentzen]

By engineering, do you mean applied mathematician?

software engineering ... automation ... optimization
and don't forget that an important application of automated theorem proving is checking the logic of digital chips before go into mass production

I never thought about the meaning of applied mathematics. Of course, it doesn't share the goals of pure mathematics, but that doesn't help too much with clarifying its own meaning and goals.

 

[romsofia]

After realizing I've never read any works of Fock's, I decided to check out his book on gravitation, so I'm currently reading "Theory of Space, Time and Gravitation" by Vladimir Fock. I actually enjoy his approach to relativity so far. Pretty clean, seems almost like the "correct" way to teach introduction courses on it.

I also found it funny how he had to bring up his disdain for calling it "General relativity", in which he concludes the introduction with a rant on it, "We call the theory of Einstein space the Theory of Gravitation, not the "general theory of relativity ", because the latter name is nonsensical." In the preceding paragraphs, he argues there is actually no "relativity" in "general relativity", and by doing so, it somehow leads to misunderstandings of the theory (which I'm sure he will make clear on the chapters involving gravitation).

 

[vanhees71]

When was the book written? The "philosophical remarks" by Fock may well be to prevent from getting into trouble in showing, that the theory is compatible with dialectical materialism, because otherwise it would have been even dangerous to work publicly about it. I also did this for quantum theory. You can find such phrases in many Russian textbooks. A "nice" summary is the appendix of the quantum-mechanics textbook by Blokhintsev.

 

[AndreasC]

When was the book written? The "philosophical remarks" by Fock may well be to prevent from getting into trouble in showing, that the theory is compatible with dialectical materialism, because otherwise it would have been even dangerous to work publicly about it. I also did this for quantum theory. You can find such phrases in many Russian textbooks. A "nice" summary is the appendix of the quantum-mechanics textbook by Blokhintsev.

Fok however was interested in such subjects both before and after Zhdanovschina. Not to say that it didn't play its part, since I see he very specifically mentions Mach in that book. However it's not the whole story.

 

[romsofia]

When was the book written? The "philosophical remarks" by Fock may well be to prevent from getting into trouble in showing, that the theory is compatible with dialectical materialism, because otherwise it would have been even dangerous to work publicly about it. I also did this for quantum theory. You can find such phrases in many Russian textbooks. A "nice" summary is the appendix of the quantum-mechanics textbook by Blokhintsev.

Ah, I hadn't considered that. It was in the early 1950s, so it makes more sense from that POV.

I enjoy the history of physics, so I should probably find a book that talks about how scientists worked in the USSR during this time period as I am now curious!

 

[Gavinn]

I am reading this book:
https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/0494#t=aboutBook
A tough one

 

[vanhees71]

I only know some papers, because I was stumbling over this appendix in Blokhintsev's book, which sounded very bizarre to me. Well, that's my usual reaction to "philosophy of physics" anyway, but I was surprised that scientists like Fock, you only vaguely know from how their achievements are quoted in textbooks (in this case the Fock space in QFT), could come to such strange conclusions as stating that already Lenin head quantum-mechanical ideas ;-)). Here's a review:

https://www.sps.ch/artikel/geschich...efense-of-modern-theories-in-soviet-union-13/

 

[AndreasC]

I only know some papers, because I was stumbling over this appendix in Blokhintsev's book, which sounded very bizarre to me. Well, that's my usual reaction to "philosophy of physics" anyway, but I was surprised that scientists like Fock, you only vaguely know from how their achievements are quoted in textbooks (in this case the Fock space in QFT), could come to such strange conclusions as stating that already Lenin head quantum-mechanical ideas ;-)). Here's a review:

https://www.sps.ch/artikel/geschich...efense-of-modern-theories-in-soviet-union-13/

This is a good article, I read that a while ago. Fock is indeed very interesting. Though I don't think he ever said Lenin had "quantum mechanical ideas", but rather that dialectical materialism (which predates Lenin, it was first formulated by Engels) is not incompatible with the new advances. At the time there were philosophers attacking dialectical materialism based on its supposed incompatibility with them, and, (worse for Fock) philosophers in the USSR who attacked the new advances for their incompatibility with diamat.

I think Fock had two things in his mind. On the one hand, he though diamat was indeed a good philosophical framework to interpret and depthen knowledge of nature. On the other hand, he wanted to defend the new advances from attacks coming from the "diamat philosopher" camp, which in the USSR was official philosophy, and at the time of the Zhdanov doctrine you could actually get in real deep trouble for things like that (or, on the flip side, you could get promoted to stardom peddling pseudoscience, like Lysenko). So he also wanted to separate to some degree the content of the new theories from the philosophical debates, while also demonstrating that diamat is compatible and can be used fruitfully to further investigations.

As an aside, while most Marxist USSR philosophers at the time were attacking Bohr vigorously for positivist views, his closest, most loyal ally from the start was Leon Rosenfeld, who was, get this, a high profile Marxist and member of the French Communist Party, who tried to use his influence to block Marxist critics of complementarity and Copenhagen interpretation etc. In the course of doing that, he also tried to block David Bohm, who was again a Marxist. To what extent Bohm's Marxist views incentivized him to try and develop a realist view of QM, I don't know. But it would be interesting to read about. But it's very interesting how closely these seemingly unrelated political debates tracked advancements, even though traditional history of physics tends to erase them.

 

[Demystifier]

To what extent Bohm's Marxist views incentivized him to try and develop a realist view of QM, I don't know.

In his view of QM Bohm was influenced by some eastern philosophy, and by eastern I don't mean Soviet.

 

[AndreasC]

In his view of QM Bohm was influenced by some eastern philosophy, and by eastern I don't mean Soviet.

Yeah, I know he engaged with Hindu philosophy etc, but to my understanding that was mostly later. Don't know any more details though.

 

[AndreasC]

In his view of QM Bohm was influenced by some eastern philosophy, and by eastern I don't mean Soviet.

The following paper I found seems to talk about the issue: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.05611

 

[haushofer]

I was curious about Schwichtenberger's No Nonsense QFT book,

https://www.amazon.com/dp/3948763011/?tag=pfamazon01-20

It contains some nice insights, but my god, literally every step is explicitly spelled out and it's a bit surreal to be reminded of what an integral or complex number is after several hundred pages (it's like arriving at an Arabic learning book at page 400 and be reminded how to pronounce the alif). I'm also sceptical about what readers actually learn from such an "layed back" approach without any exercises. Because of the vast space of explicitness (and topics; e.g. why treat special relativity as if it's the reader's very first encounter? Why all those explicit exposure to examples with ordinary vectors?) some crucial topics aren't covered (why not a nice exposition of e.g. the i-epsilon usage which can be confusing? Where's the QED calculation of the electron's magnetic moment? etc)

Don't get me wrong: the book is nicely written, refreshing in its (intuitive) approach, and contains really nice insights, especially for a very first encounter. It's just a bit cumbersome to find them sometimes, especially if you already have some background, and some of the notation was confusing to me. To me, the overly done explicitness made it sometimes a bit annoying instead of enlightening, and I missed some topics. Leaving one with the didactic question: what does a reader really learn after reading al those explicit calculations spit out in excruciating detail without having done any exercises? I'm not sure that's understanding "to be proud of", as the back of the book promises. But maybe I'm not the right public to start with.

 

[AndreasC]

I am reading Padmanabhan's Cosmology and Astrophysics through Problems. The idea is to teach the subject through exercises, without much explicit instruction.

My understanding is that he intended this book for people who already know the basics of astrophysics. This is probably the audience that makes the most sense to teach through this method. I don't really know astrophysics beyond absorbing some things here and there. I thought I could manage by general physics background, but the exercises are *HARD*. Even the ones that are ranked 1/3 in difficulty. Maybe it's just these ones I tried already that seem so hard to me because I am not very familiar with their subject. But yeah, it is NOT a good resource for an intro, unless hints are provided. I will persevere a bit more but there's really very few things there I can solve completely on my own in a rasonable time frame (although it is very satisfying when I manage it).

As a mild criticism, I would say it needs fewer "show that" exercises and more "find" exercises if it wants to be consistent with its target. But probably make them a bit easier. Or even better, come up with exercises which ask you something like "calculate quantities of x type", where some of them are easy, some are medium and some are hard. This way it doesn't shut off less advanced people completely, but it can also be pushed. In my opinion, hard exercises are better when you at least know where to start.

 

[apostolosdt]

I only know some papers, because I was stumbling over this appendix in Blokhintsev's book, which sounded very bizarre to me. Well, that's my usual reaction to "philosophy of physics" anyway, but I was surprised that scientists like Fock, you only vaguely know from how their achievements are quoted in textbooks (in this case the Fock space in QFT), could come to such strange conclusions as stating that already Lenin head quantum-mechanical ideas ;-)). Here's a review:

https://www.sps.ch/artikel/geschich...efense-of-modern-theories-in-soviet-union-13/

Interesting reading, although my only contact with Fock's physics was through Hartree-Fock approximation during my graduate years. Thanks for pointing out this paper.

The following paper I found seems to talk about the issue: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.05611

I only knew Bohm from the Aharonov–Bohm effect. I happened to be doing some research work (early 1990s) at the same university where Bohm was an emeritus professor (but not in the same college). I knew he was at Birkbeck, which I occasionally visited, but I never met him. Ironically, I've learned a lot more about him by reading various posts in this Forum, but mostly by reading about Bohm the scientist because of those posts.

But then, I came across an article, cited below, by Christian Forstner, of the Max Planck Institute, that outlines a rather "acute" image of Bohm the philosopher. Hopefully, some comments by more knowledgeable members would clarify Forstner's article.

https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/sites/default/files/Preprints/P303.pdf

 

[vanhees71]

I also know Bohm's very good quantum-mechanics textbook, written before he dealt with de Broglie's idea of pilot waves. I think writing this book triggered Bohm's interest in finding a so-called "realistic interpretation".

 

[apostolosdt]

I also know Bohm's very good quantum-mechanics textbook, written before he dealt with de Broglie's idea of pilot waves. I think writing this book triggered Bohm's interest in finding a so-called "realistic interpretation".

You sound quite positive in describing Bohm's QM book. So, I won't find myself reading "interpretation" stuff, if I, out of curiosity, try to thumb through it, is that right? (My acquaintance of QM is with more standard textbooks.)

 

[vanhees71]

This book is very conventional Copenhagen. It was published in 1951 before Bohm invented his pilot-wave interpretation.

 

[Demystifier]

So, I won't find myself reading "interpretation" stuff, if I, out of curiosity, try to thumb through it, is that right?

There is some interpretation stuff in the book, but in the Copenhagen spirit. But most of the book is not about interpretations.