Learning Lessons from String Research Decline

arivero · Jun 20, 2004

arivero said:

This is too equivocal: The evidence that mathematics is the way to go is overwhelming. No other approach has the potential to explain so many - indeed, virtually all known - questions about fundamental physics. This is a result of it's (mostly still undiscovered) richness and depth (duality symmetries, in particular the ones relating spacetime geometry and gauge theory, and, of course, the way it incorporates supersymmetry etc).

Cheers,

Alejandro

setAI · Jun 20, 2004

jeff said:

This is too equivocal: The evidence that strings is the way to go is overwhelming. No other theory has the potential to explain so many - indeed, virtually all known - questions about fundamental physics...

except of course that it is background dependent which prevents it from truly being fundamental- fix that main flaw- make string theory background independent- then we should be getting somewhere-

___________________________

/:set\AI transmedia laboratories

http://setai-transmedia.com

arivero · Jun 21, 2004

About the stats: marcus, have you divided it by the total number of papers? hep had a small decreasing at the end of 2003,
http://arxiv.org/Stats/hca_avg.gif

marcus · Jun 21, 2004

arivero said:

About the stats: marcus, have you divided it by the total number of papers? hep had a small decreasing at the end of 2003,
http://arxiv.org/Stats/hca_avg.gif

interesting graphic, I had never seen that at arXiv.

In 1993 astro-ph was only about 1/7 of hep
and now it is about the same size
(in the rate that papers are coming in)

also hep peaked in 2002 and has, as you pointed out, declined
it illustrates a shift in research interest and excitement, I suppose,
so many good new instruments in space----the uncertain wandering of
theory development since the mid 1980s---maybe a number of
related things

selfAdjoint · Jun 21, 2004

But look at the steady growh of cond-mat also. Part of this is that it now includes the hot network theory area, and also the statistical mechanics approach to finance, which seems to have survived the dot-com crash.

arivero · Jun 21, 2004

On other hand, one should compare this with another more veteran journals, because perhaps it only means that the ArXiV has taken ten years to reach all the interested audience in the field, and by now it has touched the ceiling. Perhaps it signals it is mature enough for improvements

marcus · Jul 13, 2004

Two perspectives on the "Landscape"

Here are two perspectives on the String "Landscape" exerpted from Woit's blog "Not Even Wrong". They are by people who have sometimes posted on PF----Urs Schreiber and Peter Woit----and were prompted by a a lay question from an artist by the name of Pyracantha.

Here is Pyracantha's original question:

"Pyracantha from "Electron Blue" here, the artist who is trying to learn math/physics in middle age. I read your site in the hope that someday I'll understand what you and your colleagues are talking about. But I have heard one phrase many times and it intrigues me. What is the "landscape?" Could you explain it in terms that a beginner like me could understand?"

---Urs quote from Comments on "Witten in Crete"-----

Hi Pyracantha -

in so-called perturbative quantum theories one chooses a solutiuon of the classical equations of motion, the so-called 'background' and then studies quantum corrections to that background order by order.

For instance in ordinary quantum field theory the background might be flat Minkwoski spacetime and in that background we can imagine photons and electrons to propagate and interact in Feynman-diagram fashion. The 'vacuum' background together with all these particle whizzing around would then be a full perturbative state of the theory.

(One problem is that not all aspects of the full quantum theory are captured by such a perturbative procedure.)

Now, in string theory the idea is pretty much the same, only that here the particles are not pointlike but a have a small linear extension. This seemingly simple modification has drastic consequences. While in field theory there are many possible choices of fundamental particles, their interactions, and choices of background, the consistency of string interaction very much constrains all three of these. The big open question is: How much exactly?

When people talk about the 'string theory landscape' they are thinking of the abstract space in which each point is one consistent perturbative string theory background, i.e. one consistent choice of particle content, particle interaction and classical spacetime that they propagate in. In principle the number and position of points in this 'theory space' is determined by the background equations of motion of string theory (or equivalently, if you want to hear the technical terms, by the requirement that there is a supercfonformal field theory with central charge 15 on the worldsheet of the string).

There has been some recent progress in better understanding this space - but it is still immensely ill understood. Still, the progress that has been made has appeared significant enough to some people to base some more far reaching speculation on it. That's because a good understanding of which background solutions string theory admits is the key to be able to apply string theory to pheonomenological considerations. When a string theory background is found which is consistent with the observed particles of nature, then studying the stringy quantum corrections to it would allow to deduce what this background predicts as corrections to the currently known physics.

Peter Woit here has pointed out repeatedly that some of the speculations concerning the landscape that have been published are not at all based on results that have really been calculated.

On the other hand, the mere fact that a discussion of such a 'theory landscape' is possible (even though not easy) is important. It is not possible in field theory of point particles. There we also have some restrictions on the Lagrangians (i.e. the particle content and interaction) that we are allowed to consider as a consistent field theory, but they are far less severe than those found in string theory.

As has been pointed out very nicely by Jacques Distler in his weblog, the points in the landscape which are consistent with the experiments that we have made are probably very rare. In any case, none has been found so far. If there is none at all, then string theory is wrong as a theory of nature. If there is a single such point, then string theory, based on the currently known data, could make predictions about for instance new particles that could be found in future colliders. (These predictions could still be disporved by experiments, of course.). If however there are very many such points then predictions for new particles etc. would be very difficult. One might, in this case, still try to make some statistical predictions. Such statistics about properties of the 'landscape' are currently what some people are trying to do. But it seems fair to say that this is, while an intersting idea, quite premature.

Finally, there is the theoretical possibility that the world we live in cannot be understood as a small perturbation of some background. The success of perturbative field theory suggests otherwise, but nobody can know this for sure. So one possibility is that none of the points in the 'landscape' correspond to the world we live in, but some nonperturbative description of string theory is necessary to describe our world. Nonperturbative description of string theory tend to be described not by full classical backgrounds, but by asymptotical backgrounds, this means roughly that at spatial infinity the background is fixed, while 'in between' physics is described fully nonperturbatively. Nonperturbative discriptions of string theory are known for instance for universes which asymptotically have the geometry of what is called 'anti-deSitter Space'. This is, roughly, the shape of a universe with a negative cosmological constant.

Now, unfortunately for string theorists, recent very exciting measurements of various cosmological parameters have shown that instead we observe a cosmological constant which is positive. This means that the particular anti-deSitter non-perturbative deswcription of string theory appears not to be applicable to describe the universe that we live in.

This is probably the main reason for the current excitement about landscape discussions. Namely people are trying to find out if in the landscape admits universes which only temporarily have a positive cosmological constant, while asymptotically this constant goes negative. If this were the case then there would still be hope that the nonperturbative string theory description which involves asymptotically anti-deSitter space could be used to describe the world we observe.

So that's what all this landscape talk is about. Unfortunately, since there is so little known for sure about the 'landscape' (even though the landscape is a well defined mathematical object (space of all superconformal 2d theories with c=15) which can in principle be understood exactly), some of the discussion concerned with it recently has tended to be more philosophical than scientific.

Posted by Urs Schreiber at July 13, 2004 04:38 AM

-------end quote------

marcus · Jul 13, 2004

Peter Woit's reply---a second perspective

-----quote from the "Witten in Crete" comments-----

Hi Urs,

Thanks a lot for the detailed summary of the current point of view on the "landscape". I hope that helps Pyracantha, but if not here's a much over-simplified version:

String/M theory supposedly is a theory of strings and maybe other objects in an 11-dimensional space-time. We see 4 of the dimensions (3 space, 1 time), what about the other 7? The initial hope was that there would be a small number of possible consistent choices of these 7 dimensions, so there would be a small number of calculations you could do and see if one of them agreed with experiment.

Lately people have started to believe that there are an astronomically large number of possible consistent choices, and these are referred to as the "landscape". The reason for this terminology is that each such choice comes with an important number attached, the energy of the vacuum, and if one imagined mapping out all possible choices on a plane, one could imagine making a topographical map, with the energy the altitude. Zero energy choices would be at sea-level, and the whole thing would presumably have peaks and valleys, with our universe sitting at the bottom of some valley.

Anyway, that's very roughly the idea.

The standard ideology has always been that this large number of choices is just due to the fact that one only knows an approximation to the real string/M-theory, and that if one knew the real thing one would find that all or most of these choices were inconsistent. The other part of this ideology is that there is a unique real string/M-theory, for which all these choices are just possible lowest energy states. In this scenario, maybe they are only approximately at lowest energy and the true lowest energy state is something else, or maybe there really are an extremely large number of possible lowest energy states (this may include metastable states, not at lowest energy, but separated by an energy barrier from lower energy states).

My own point of view is that this standard ideology is just wishful thinking. My guess is that there isn't a simple unique 11-dimensional theory, but something rather complicated, involving a possibly infinite number of choices as to how to set it up. People are free to keep believing the standard ideology, since it's hard to prove a negative, to show that what they would like to exist doesn't.

The really strange thing that has happened in recent years is that a lot of string theorists, most prominently Susskind, have adopted the point of view that, whatever string theory is, it has an astronomically large "landscape" of equally good vacuum states, and thus equally good models of the universe. I would have thought that once someone had convinced themselves that, even if there was a unique real string theory, it would be consistent with an unimaginably large number of possible models of the universe and quite possibly be completely vacuous and unable to predict anything, they would give up on the whole idea. The idea Urs mentions, that maybe only a small number of these models is consistent with some simple facts one knows about the standard model, so you could use these to make predictions about other things, seems to me to be just more wishful thinking.

Given that you don't know the underlying theory, and what you do know leads to an essentially infinite number of possibilities, it's not clear that the kinds of arguments that Susskind et. al. are making are even science at all. Some of these papers are weird documents, with virtually no equations, just a lot of hand-waving arguments involving massive amounts of wishful thinking and no solid conclusions. My take on all this is that the time is long past at which a reasonable person should have given up on the whole idea and moved on to something more promising, but sociological reasons are keeping this from happening.

Posted by Peter at July 13, 2004 10:53 AM
------end quote-------

marcus · Jul 13, 2004

These two statements about the Landscape Problem in string theory show the problem very clearly. the confusion surrounding the landscape could (one should always remember) be a temporary and helpful stage in the development of a more deterministic theory. But right now it involves some discomfort and uncertainty for some of those involved and a certain amount of quiet tearing of hair over Leonard Susskind and the Anthropic controversy.

In this thread I want to suggest a connection between the present confusion (perhaps crisis is too strong a word) and a decline in string research visible in the numbers.

the clearest decline has been in the citations indices for 2002 and 2003
as compared with sample earlier years such as 1999 and 2000. We looked at those earlier in this thread. One point in looking at citations is that the Spires figures for 2003 are done---the topcites lists arent going to change. this may not be true for the whole database. One can compare total numbers of papers, as in these two links, but the 2003 number may change because cataloging may still be in progress:

2002:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+2002

2003:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+2003

selfAdjoint gave an interesting explanation for the decline in citations having to do with earlier great papers "starting many hares" which caused a dissipation of research effort in many directions.

Jim Graber pointed out that in another catalog (NASA Astrophysics Data, Harvard) the decline in numbers of papers from 2002 to 2003 was rather modest, only on the order of 10 percent, it seemed to me.

The preprint numbers are in some sense a "leading indicator" because hardcopy publication comes about a year later. So one can look at the arXiv numbers for 2002, 2003, and LTM (last twelve months) to get an idea of the decline to be expected in hardcopy publication between 2003 and 2004.

preprints in 2002:
http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro...brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/2002/0/1

preprints in 2003:
http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro...brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/2003/0/1

Last twelve months (e.g. 15 June 2003 to 15 June 2004):
http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro...brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/past/0/1

What is interesting is perhaps not the decline in string research (in both numbers and citations) itself, but whether there is any connection between the numerical decline and confusion over the Landscape. I guess Peter Woit's comments are relevant here.

sol2 · Jul 13, 2004

I do not think it so strange that the landscape could not of held us to some geometrical standards. It would be as if the professor crossing the room would have held some underlying principals, that govern such landscape developements. What lies beneath?

This idea of Susskind is another monitoring factor I like to compare.

Cherenkov radiation under artful expression always seems really interesting when thinking of Susskind through your explanation highlighted.

I have a picture somewhere in my archive that I saw yesterday, that I am having trouble finding. It would have sparked some wonder. Along side of this the cubical expressionism in quantum gravity(monte carlo effect). . Just one of the many artful expressions these searchers use as a expression of the world they are seeing?

One thing that continued to haunt my perspective is the aurora borealis, just one more aspect we might have detailled to some maxwellian progressive state out side the envelope, to lavish in some cradled development of the gravitational field. Might have went to far here

marcus · Jul 29, 2004

The preprint numbers are in some sense a "leading indicator" because hardcopy publication comes about a year later. So one can look at the arXiv numbers for 2002, 2003, and LTM (last twelve months) to get an idea of the decline to be expected in hardcopy publication between 2003 and 2004.

preprints in 2002:
http://lanl.arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,...brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/2002/0/1

preprints in 2003:
http://lanl.arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,...brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/2003/0/1

Last twelve months (e.g. 28 July 2003 to 28 July 2004):
http://lanl.arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,...brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/past/0/1

these numbers are not perfectly stable, the arxiv search engine isn't designed to be consistent in these large searches, but the annual percentage changes are fairly consistent---just now when i ran these three I got 1570, 1201, and 873 for the periods 2002, 2003, and Last Twelve Months. Since these are preprints, a leading indicator of publication, we could project publication figures as follows:

publ. 2003 1570
publ. 2004 1201
publ. 2005 873

this is a wild stab in the dark, obviously.
We have a palpable decline in arxiv preprints (in these research areas) since a peak around 2002---this is not in question and it is one possible measure of activity. But it is obviously risky to convert the preprint numbers into an index of publication.

thanks to various people who have helped either with links or advice or both, in the process of getting this year by year research trajectory sketched out.

selfAdjoint, arivero, and jgraber for their comments, and also thanks to
notevenwrong who posted earlier in this thread and suggested using the
Spires database as a better historical record than the preprint arxiv.

selfAdjoint · Jul 29, 2004

Marcus, I have to say that your method of searching on keywords is sensitive to fashions in topic names, so AdS/CFT might be synonymed Maldacena, or even now Hawking! Just thinking about this I would expect the numbers for any fixed set of keywords to decline on a three year cycle as new topic names replace old.

marcus · Jul 29, 2004

selfAdjoint said:

Marcus, I have to say that your method of searching on keywords is sensitive to fashions in topic names, so AdS/CFT might be synonymed Maldacena, or even now Hawking! Just thinking about this I would expect the numbers for any fixed set of keywords to decline on a three year cycle as new topic names replace old.

let's try to get as good numbers as conveniently possible---the comments from you and others have been helpful so far and much appreciated. If the topical terms that researchers use change that in itself is interesting.

Please look back two posts to
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=269755#post269755
and look at the spires numbers 1986-2002
this is with a fixed set of keywords used by the professional librarians
whose job is to make a useful database for the HEP community.
I do not see any 3 year cycle such as you say might be expected, but there are other features such as a temporary dip after 1900.

IIRC in the spires case one is limited to choice of keywords (and I don't think AdS/CFT would be an option) but I may be able to get higher numbers in the arXiv search by putting in AdS/CFT. Bear in mind, though, that the arXiv preprint numbers are mainly a way of getting a leading indicator.

selfAdjoint · Jul 29, 2004

I don't like the spires keywords. I went through them several weeks ago and tried to pick out by hand the ones that could be related uniquely to string physics in the broader sense. The list of about 40 words I came up with was pathetic as far as capturing recent and current research. Librarians just don't understand physicists! And they are always years behind. So I would suspect that the non-appearence of a three year cycle you saw was an artifact of librarian conservatism rather than truly present in the papers being indexed.

marcus · Jul 29, 2004

selfAdjoint said:

I don't like the spires keywords. I went through them several weeks ago and tried to pick out by hand the ones that could be related uniquely to string physics in the broader sense. The list of about 40 words I came up with was pathetic as far as capturing recent and current research. Librarians just don't understand physicists! And they are always years behind. So I would suspect that the non-appearence of a three year cycle you saw was an artifact of librarian conservatism rather than truly present in the papers being indexed.

I hate to sound new age or Clintonian but I share your pain. the nice thing about arXiv is that it is not governed by librarians

actually I love librarians they are wonderful and some of my best friends---but they have their own data retrieval ways

anyway an arXiv search of the preprints is simply governed by the words the author himself puts in his abstract summarizing the paper

so it has different shortcomings----like language fashions: a guy can continue doing the same research, mathematically speaking, and just use different (buzz) words in his abstract.

thanks for trying to improve the Spires search by sifting thru their list of allowed keywords!

it may be more possible to improve the arXiv search

marcus · Jul 29, 2004

Code:

1994    610    610
1995    801    801
1996   1002   1002
1997   1248   1248
1998   1299   1299
1999   1403   1403
2000   1491   1492
2001   1546   1546
2002   1570   1570
2003   1201   1408
LTM     873   1117

marcus · Aug 4, 2004

ArXiv has changed the interface to their search engine and I haven't figured it out yet.

spires is OK though, so at least we have those numbers
and Jim Graber's NASA Astrophysical Data resource is still fine.

jgraber's NASA-ADA is now in rough agreement about 2003 with spires
(but this may not last since Spires may add more to its database as the
librarians continue to process 2003 papers)

it has been pointed out that the data is unsatisfactory---true enough---it consists of applying the same recipe year after year, the same search proceedure for each of a series of 10 or more years, and it can be argued that the right recipe to use changes.

however i suppose that applying the same keywords year by year for 10 years does tell something---produces some kind of trajectory which one can attempt to understand. Moreover the results correspond to what e.g. Lubos Motl says----he has said string theory research output has declined during the past year or so----that's anecdotal or hearsay but he might be expected to know. So what we can do is produce some semi-objective corroboration of what an insider says. it is not authoritative but it correlates to the scuttlebut.

marcus · Aug 5, 2004

ahrkron has asked that we have something comparable for Loop research papers.

ahrkron said:

I'm curious about what has happened with LQG. How does it behave using a similar "diagnostic tool"?

Code:

marcus · Aug 19, 2004

More changes in the Spires database. Time to update:
The Spires 2003 number (and maybe some other years as well) will eventually be larger as the librarians continue indexing and add more papers to the database. The keyword search tool has been modified lately and may also find more papers.

January 2003 was when the Kachru 10¹⁰⁰ string vacuums paper came out. It is a good time-marker. It is now a year and a half later

Spires HEP database counts:

Code:

String, brane, M-theory papers by year of publication
1986   138
1987   196
1988   365
1989   766
1990  1114
1991   953
1992   874
1993   782
1994   882
1995   998
1996  1084
1997  1458
1998  1414
1999  1532
2000  1686
2001  1807
2002  2126
2003  2104
2004  ...

Here are links so you can check the numbers yourself.

1986:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1986

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1987

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1988

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1989

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1990

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1991

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1992

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1993

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1994

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1995

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1996

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1997

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1998

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+1999

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+2000

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+2001

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+2002

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+2003

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=FIND+K+%22STRING+MODEL%22+OR+MATRIX+MODEL+OR+MEMBRANE+MODEL+AND+DATE+2004

---------------

Arivero provided a graph from the preprint arxiv.
http://arxiv.org/Stats/hca_avg.gif

selfAdjoint · Aug 20, 2004

Arivero's graph shows a general drop in hep submissions (if I read it right). That would be a sum of experiment, lattice, phenomenology, and theory, and include everything, not just string physics. So your drop in strings (I still have search questions about that) would just be a detail within an overall decline.

It seems to me that instead of scoring points on this branch of physics or that, we should be concerned for the future health of the whole field.

marcus · Aug 20, 2004

selfAdjoint said:

Arivero's graph shows a general drop in hep submissions (if I read it right). That would be a sum of experiment, lattice, phenomenology, and theory, and include everything, not just string physics. So your drop in strings (I still have search questions about that) would just be a detail within an overall decline...

that's one good interpretation. In fact this is what Alejandro's original post said. He made the very same point. Personally I do not know for sure what to think. The statistics are suggestive and point in several directions.

And having said that they are suggestive (variously) one should also say that they are not very stable or statistically solid! For my part I would like to have more reliable indices of US and World research output in theoretical physics.

I have put some effort into getting some numbers and what I've posted is the best I can do.

Probably the most sigificant (as I see it, and you have indicated agreement I think) are the CITATION figures that form the basis of Michael Peskin's annual review. You have offered an interesting explanation of the shift in ranking in the TopCites area. I don't know if you still hold to that interpretation. Maybe I should update that information so we can take another look.

Again from a personal standpoint, it looks to me as if plenty of theoretical physics is being done, just that some of the action has moved over into astrophysics and condensed matter.
Peskin's review of citations moved astrophysics up in the ranking of "what's hot in physics" (Peskin's phrase, perhaps an unfortunate choice of words) and the numbers of papers and citations seem to support the shift----also Alejandro's graph showed a rise in condensed matter research IIRC and he pointed this out in his post.

So I differ from you in the sense that I am not concerned with the overall health. Plenty of stuff is being done, as I see it, we just have shifts of research emphasis.
I think it is worthwhile tracking them regardless of whether one has an ax to grind or wants to "score points" for anyone team.

Tom McCurdy · Aug 22, 2004

Sorry Marcus, I haven't fully had time to read the full 4 pages of this current subsection however I would like to make a small theory about why the numbers are down. Could it be that the String theory had become such a heavily researched topic since it has become mainstream that they are just running out of new angles to tackle the topic. This is not to say that string theory is any less probable of leading to toe, merely that people are running out of ways to restate what others have said. Thus leading to less cituations in articles what you gauged as "quality" I believe (please correct me if I am wrong) I know I am kind of playing devil's avocate here but as my stats teacher told me over and over again Correlation does not imply causation citing the example of how in an area in New England. There was a case where the more priests there were in an area the greater the number of drunk people in the town that caused crimes. However this does not mean that that increase in priest caused more drunk crimes simply that there was a correlation.

OF Course I could be compeltely wrong. Just an Idea

marcus · Aug 22, 2004

Tom McCurdy said:

Sorry Marcus, I haven't fully had time to read the full 4 pages of this current subsection however I would like to make a small theory about why the numbers are down. Could it be that the String theory had become such a heavily researched topic since it has become mainstream that they are just running out of new angles to tackle the topic. This is not to say that string theory is any less probable of leading to toe...

OF Course I could be compeltely wrong. Just an Idea

On the contrary I would encourage you in this point of view. Of course I don't know enough to say you are definitely right! but this seems like a very
reasonable explanation.

also the statistics themselves are very very bad. I have had a terrible time getting numbers that will stay the same.

Spires (Stanford SLAC and DESY in Germany) has just changed their search engine again and I can't get it to work! this happened just this week.
Spires is a very wonderful database in several (but unfortunately *not all*) ways.

be skeptical of everything, and have fun

(PS, better find Marlon's LQG thread, is has a good link in it)

marcus · Sep 1, 2004

the changing face of High Energy Physics is shown by the American Physical Society's meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields
http://dpf2004.ucr.edu/program.html

These are the plenary talks.
I have bolded plenary talks which appear related to astronomy and cosmology, neutrinos and high energy astrophysics.
The string theory talk is in blue for easy spotting by those interested.
Sean Carroll gave the final plenary talk, today 31Aug, on cosmology.

---Friday August 27th---
8:10 am
*Neutrino Physics Experiment
*Kai Zuber (Oxford)

9:00 am
*Neutrino Physics Theory
*André de Gouvêa (Northwestern)

10:20 am
*Electroweak and Top Quark Physics
*Evelyn Thomson (Ohio State)

11:20 am
*Electroweak Symmetry Breaking
*David Rainwater (Rochester)

---Saturday August 28th---

8:00 am
*Heavy Flavor Physics
*Aaron Roodman (SLAC)

8:50 am
*Advanced Accelerators - Near Future and Far Future Options
*Jamie Rosenzweig (UCLA)

10:10 am
*Cosmology - Experiment
*Joseph Fowler (Princeton)

11:00 am
*How to Popularize Particle Physics
*Elizabeth Simmons (Michigan State)

---Monday August 30th---

1:30 pm
*Heavy Ion Physics
*Jamie Nagle (Univ. of Colorado)
*
2:20 pm
Very High Energy Astrophysics
*Stefan Westerhoff (Columbia)

Tuesday August 31st

10:20 am
*CP Violation
*Owen Long (UC Riverside)

11:10 am
*Current Trends in String Theory
*Clifford Johnson (USC)

1:30 pm
*QCD
*Sean Fleming (Carnegie Mellon)

2:20 pm
*Computing in High Energy Physics
*Ian Fisk (FNAL)

3:40 pm
*Searches for New Physics
*Gustaaf Brooijmans (Columbia)

4:30 pm
*Cosmology Theory
*Sean Carroll (Chicago)

marcus · Sep 20, 2004

there have been several "current state of string research" type summaries lately

Lubos Motl has an overview of String Field Theory. Peter Woit gives a link to it:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/archives/000080.html

http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=...0409151145350.2121-100000@feynman.harvard.edu

Also the Clifford Johnson talk Current Trends in String Theory, mentioned in the previous post, is available for download at the conference site.
http://dpf2004.ucr.edu/program.html
http://dpf2004.ucr.edu/plenary/johnson.pdf

Also Mike Douglas just posted this:
Basic results in Vacuum Statistics
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0409207

[edit: Peter Woit's comment on Douglas paper appeared shortly afterwards:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/archives/000082.html ]

Learning Lessons from String Research Decline

Similar threads

Hot Threads

Recent Insights