A series of perturbations
Things are a mess in OGC right now. Furniture is being replaced in all rooms, at godawful hours when I should be asleep. I've had to rifle through the underwear of an introvert, then was so disgusted I left my room in haste and locked myself out. This morning, they decided to fix a hole in my wall, at a time of their choosing. I struggled to Dbar with my sleeping bag to find a couch, only to be woken up because they decided to fix the pool table. No wonder I've been having bad dreams.
I must report to you more perturbations. While fixing a hole in my wall, they botched up the painting around the wall. The next day I was chased out of my room by painters. The day after that, I was again awoken because they decided to emboss my door with my room number. Such embossing may have benefitted you, and I wished to tell them it is no longer necessary. I endured the last of the indignities.
While requestioning what a particle is, I decided to approach quantum field theory from a different perspective. After a few years in condensed matter, I am burning with questions about field theory. Why is it so ubiquitous? Or is its ubiquity justified by a fallacy? What are there field theories where the Hamiltonian is zero? I started reading Zee's QFT in a nutshell. The writing is not stripped of mathematics, rather it presents the minimum amount of mathematics to convey the essential physical ideas through the shortest possible path. It's quite an achievement. I find I am falling in love with QFT again. The first time was over a series of lectures by Polyakov.
There are many insights here. One treasure: why do we need QFT in condensed matter? Because phonons are created when we tap on a crystal. Electrons in bands can absorb a photon and be ejected to a higher band, leaving behind a hole which acts as an independent particle. Because to describe the creation and annihilation of particles, one needs QFT. Schrodinger's equation describes the unitary evolution of a collection of particles, and as such the number of particles must remain fixed for all time.
I am flattered that I can instill urgency in you. Probably I need to distill some urgency out of my life. The hustle of day-to-day research can be overwhelming, and it is so easy to slip into a packaged role and ask simple questions to which there are simple answers. I need to expand my mind and talk to brilliant people. I don't do this enough.
I think you take 'no elementary particles' too literally. I speak of a healthy suspicion toward any particle that is claimed to be elementary. Who knows if the turtles really goes down forever, I am merely saying we should find out. I like how our expansive science is. It seems to consistently defy any egocentric world view. People may lament their loss of identity, an identity forged from a sense of special that relies on improbability. But you say, we make sense in a way that is universal. For this view, I cherish you.
I must report to you more perturbations. While fixing a hole in my wall, they botched up the painting around the wall. The next day I was chased out of my room by painters. The day after that, I was again awoken because they decided to emboss my door with my room number. Such embossing may have benefitted you, and I wished to tell them it is no longer necessary. I endured the last of the indignities.
While requestioning what a particle is, I decided to approach quantum field theory from a different perspective. After a few years in condensed matter, I am burning with questions about field theory. Why is it so ubiquitous? Or is its ubiquity justified by a fallacy? What are there field theories where the Hamiltonian is zero? I started reading Zee's QFT in a nutshell. The writing is not stripped of mathematics, rather it presents the minimum amount of mathematics to convey the essential physical ideas through the shortest possible path. It's quite an achievement. I find I am falling in love with QFT again. The first time was over a series of lectures by Polyakov.
There are many insights here. One treasure: why do we need QFT in condensed matter? Because phonons are created when we tap on a crystal. Electrons in bands can absorb a photon and be ejected to a higher band, leaving behind a hole which acts as an independent particle. Because to describe the creation and annihilation of particles, one needs QFT. Schrodinger's equation describes the unitary evolution of a collection of particles, and as such the number of particles must remain fixed for all time.
I am flattered that I can instill urgency in you. Probably I need to distill some urgency out of my life. The hustle of day-to-day research can be overwhelming, and it is so easy to slip into a packaged role and ask simple questions to which there are simple answers. I need to expand my mind and talk to brilliant people. I don't do this enough.
I think you take 'no elementary particles' too literally. I speak of a healthy suspicion toward any particle that is claimed to be elementary. Who knows if the turtles really goes down forever, I am merely saying we should find out. I like how our expansive science is. It seems to consistently defy any egocentric world view. People may lament their loss of identity, an identity forged from a sense of special that relies on improbability. But you say, we make sense in a way that is universal. For this view, I cherish you.
posted by Dr. Broke at 12:46 AM
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