What are you reading now? (STEM only)

[haushofer]

Wow, you've a very different experience to me. Pauli wrote essays about Jungian psychology and so on and Born wrote long essays on the meaning of science and society in general.
Bohr however always seemed flat and sober to me. Aside from the Como essay which was a bit confused, most of his writing is short and not particularly philosophical I would have said. Maybe it's different ideas of what's "philosophy".

Yes, that could be the case. It's an ongoing discussion, especially in topics on quantum mechanics. Somehow, a lot of physicists nowadays see "ontology" as "mere philosophy", while for many physicists and especially founding fathers of quantum mechanics it was just part of the physics. Maybe it's part of the increased level of abstraction of modern physics that physicists nowadays make this distinction between "philosophy" and "physics", but in my opinion such a cut is as artificial as the one by Heisenberg in quantum mechanics :P

 

[vanhees71]

I know that Pauli was also inclined to the "paranormal" and some Jungian psychology. Fortunately he kept this part of his thinking separate from his physics, which he as always presented in the no-nonsense mathematical style, which is clarifying and "demystifying" things rather than introduce obscure notions like "complementarity" like Bohr and Heisenberg. For me Bohr's writings are usually pretty obscure. Particularly his answer to the EPR paper is even more confusing than the EPR paper itself. To get Einstein's true thoughts one should rather read the Dialectica article of 1948:

A. Einstein, Dialectica 2, 320 (1948)

I'm sure that there must be somewhere an English translation of this brillant article.

Concerning philsophy and quantum theory I'm also thinking that the philosophers usually mess up the subject severely and unnecessarily. It's indeed true that to talk about quantum theory adequately you have to use pretty abstract descriptions of "physical reality", i.e., Hilbert-space vectors and operators and also, if you want to understand it from a fundamental level, Lie group and algebra-representation theory.

 

[LittleSchwinger]

Pauli's Handbuch der Physik article is very good. I guess for me Heisenberg is pretty much the same, his Chicago lectures are excellent, mathematical and concise and the more general musings are in other essays.
Bohr and Complementarity always seemed pretty clear to me as well since he constantly talks about experiments, it's just the physical fact corresponding to the mathematical fact of operators not commuting. I never found him obscure I have to say. In fact Complementarity is a common enough word in quantum information. Perhaps a difference between fields?

Currently I'm reading the 2nd Edition of Gottfried's textbook with Yan as co-author as preparation for teaching.

 

[vanhees71]

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

 

[LittleSchwinger]

I should have said Complementarity is usually mathematical stated in modern QI as two operators $A$ and $B$ whose associated eigenstates obey $(a_{i},b_{j}) = const, \forall i,j$. That's the mathematical encoding of what Bohr spoke about.

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

One of the best reasons for a non-Teutophone physicist to learn German is the price difference between the English translation of Pauli's article and the original!

 

[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"