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7:00 PM
You can see what interests me from the questions and answers I give here, on physicsoverflow.org, and on physicsforums.com. Also from my theoretical physics FAQ mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/physfaq/physics-faq.html.
Mainly quantum field theory nowadays.
@Danu yes, but the h-bar is too little focussed for me.
 
@ArnoldNeumaier Fair enough.
Anyways, it's nice to see that you're still active on PSE as well :)
 
@Danu I gained here over 8000 rep in the last two years, half of them from new contributions.
 
Wait a moment
There totally is a cat in the book
I take it back this book is great
 
You seem to suffer from mood swings today :P
 
It has been a rollercoaster of emotions
 
7:06 PM
Well...perhaps not only today
 
@ArnoldNeumaier Neat-o :)
 
Speaking of cats and physics
 
In unrelated news, computing relations in the supercharge algebra is frigging boring
 
@ACuriousMind Superthis superthat
I'm reading this book to get into the Mirror Symmetry stuff
WITTEN INDEX
SUPERSYMMETRIC VACUA
herpaderp
Such a weird mix of super-highbrow + super-lowbrow
 
7:09 PM
@Danu It approximately quadruples the number of signs and $\mathrm{i}$s floating around compared to "normal" algebras
It's very annoying
 
^hehe
 
I met Chicken Little and Henny Penny, but I summon now... @JohnRennie
 
All the anticommutations
 
By the way
If I find a new physics formula
 
7:10 PM
I wanted to do this exercise sheet because I didn't want to start the semester with slacking off again, but I am now reconsidering my choice :P
 
@Loong That's one mediocre-ass cat curve.
 
Is it gauche to call it "The me formula"
 
@ACuriousMind I'm skipping all SUSY sheets lol
 
@Slereah People might think me means mechanical engineering.
 
I'm doing top2+math. gauge theory+Riem. surf.+strings 2 sheets
SUSY and Instantons can figure themselves out
 
@Danu Well...this is the only sheet I have every week :D
 
@ACuriousMind Hahaha
Okay, get your shit together man
 
It's not my fault the other lectures apparently consider weekly exercises an archaic instrument!
 
I'm standing stationary to Earth and the light that hits me reads "t = -8". Additionally, I use angular size to determine the Earth is 8 ly away. I now accelerate to 0.99c. Despite the LC and the relativity of simultaneity, the actual light I see is still the same, right? Earth at t=-8, 8 light years away?
 
@ACuriousMind That's some lucky shit.
 
7:14 PM
@0celo7 Welcome back!
 
Weekly sheets errrrrry course over here
 
Oh @0celo7 is still banned
He can come but he cannot talk
 
<3 @0celo7
5
 
"This user has been temporarily suspended by a moderator and cannot chat for 17 days."
Gonna be a while
 
We love you anyway, Ocelot.
 
7:15 PM
@Danu Yeah, we're not big on exercises in master lectures over here. Even this sheet is only voluntary, it won't get corrected, let alone graded.
 
At least most courses also don't grade/make us hand it the sheets here in Munich
 
At least the next one won't be all SUSY. ::looks at next sheet:: "Anti-self-dual tensor fields"...well, that I can live with.
 
:)
What is the course called?
 
@Danu "Advanced String Theory", my last attempt to get at least a bit excited about ST :P
 
By the way
In string theory
 
7:20 PM
@ACuriousMind Neat-o
I'm doing Strings 2, but it sucks
 
Is the string action really just a string for the standard model?
It feels a bit weird to go from point particles to fields to strings
Going back to objects of limited extents again
 
"a string for the standard model"?
 
@Slereah I don't understand the question
 
You do know that there is no stringy standard model, right?
 
Whaaat
Why do we even study it then
My question is basically if string theory relies on objects of limited extent (ie, strings) instead of fields
 
7:23 PM
Uh
 
And if yes, how do the problems that plague point-particles in relativistic theories are avoided
Do they just not occur at all
 
@Slereah you didn't know that? Huh... I thought everyone heard that strings don't manage to produce realistic theories (yet)
 
Not producing any experimental verification isn't the same as having no theory at all :p
Big Foot has plenty of theories but no experimental evidence
 
If we could get a standard model out of strings, errybody would believe it
 
@Slereah Well...you can dispose of all the "string" language and just say you have some 2D CFT with a 10D target space and then write down the sum over worldsheets that is the string scattering amplitude
 
7:25 PM
But wouldn't point particles just be a 1D CFT
 
The "worldsheets" are "objects with limited extent" as they are compact, but...well, I don't think you can really say that the theory "relies on object of limited extent".
Likewise, you wouldn't really say that ordinary QFT relies on point particles, would you?
 
Well no, because it doesn't
The quantum field is defined at every point of the manifold
I don't even think it can have compact support since it has to be analytic, IIRC
But isn't the string action just defined on a specific region of spacetime
For like Polyakov
 
@Slereah There is no "the string action"
 
No, I think I'm wrong. Sorry
 
You have two perspectives: Worldsheet and spacetime.
In the worldsheet perspective, you have a 2D worldsheet with a CFT living on it, and it happens to have a 10D spacetime as target space. The string partition function is then defined by certain sums over such theories. Nowhere in this perturbative approach is any field living on the spacetime, it's just the target space
 
7:31 PM
Right, exactly, the spacetime is just a target space
 
In the spacetime perspective, you take the tree-level results of the string scattering and look for what "normal" QFT living on spacetime would produce these. That's when you find various 10d SUGRA theories, these are called the low-energy effective actions of string theory.
 
The interpretation as coordinates in spacetime is "external" in the sense that the formalism doesn't really tell you what the space $X^\mu$ takes values in should be
 
Is string theory as full of divergences as QFT is
Or are they milder
 
No. It's UV finite.
 
I heard milder but I am skeptical
Do you still need renormalization
 
7:33 PM
No divergences bitchezzz
10/10
 
SUSY basically kills all divergences.
 
Even the divergences you'd usually find in free fields?
 
What divergences?
 
Real question: Is non-SUSY string theory viable at all? Is the tachyonic ground state something that can be overcome?
 
Like does the stress energy tensor of the vacuum diverges and such
 
7:35 PM
@Slereah Ah, you're thinking in QFT terms. There is no "stress energy tensor of the vacuum" in the full string theory, that's a meaningless question.
 
Whaaaat
 
Since you only defined the S-matrix perturbatively by "brute force", you cannot to my knowledge, in the full string theory, compute something like "expectation values"
 
Which part
Stress energy tensor or the vacuum
 
All you have is a string scattering amplitude
 
Can't you compute full terms in the free theory?
Like just Polyakov
 
7:36 PM
what is "the free theory"?
String theory is not a QFT
Your terms mean nothing here
 
Well gee "free" isn't just a QFT term :p
 
So how do you define free? :P
 
Yes, but there is no action for string theory, no "interaction term" that is added
You just, at one point, define by force an S-matrix for interactions, and that's it
 
I'm not so sure that's a perspective that everybody shares though @ACuriousMind
 
But there totally are actions :O
At least two that I know!
 
7:38 PM
@Slereah Yes but they don't do what you think they do
 
Well what do they do
Why can't you find their Noether charges
 
In particular, the string partition function is not $Z= \int \mathcal{D}\phi\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}S}$ for any action.
@Slereah You can, but again, these actions live on the world sheet, not on spacetime
 
... isn't that what my string book starts on?
Isn't Nambu-Goto on the spacetime?
 
@Danu Well, I think almost everyone believes that either a) the analogy to Feynman diagrams is so obvious that it's not a big deal b) there is a non-perturbative formulation of string theory (M-theory, F-theory) waiting to be found.
 
Yeah the latter
 
7:40 PM
But I don't think anyone disagrees with me on the basic fact that the string partition function is just ad hoc defined in the current formulations.
@Slereah No
Both N-G and Polyakov are actions for the CFT on the worldsheet
N-G is just the "ugly" one.
 
Btw
$S_P$ is the one people really deal with
but in a 1995 long interview Witten said, when asked about the most beautiful equation, that to him the Nambu-Goto action was the nicest
I wonder why.
 
Is there a non-perturbative version of string theory
What I mean is
Does it exist but no useful calculations can be done on it
 
If you conceive of the fields $X^\mu$ as the actual coordinates of the string in the spacetime, then the classical e.o.m. describe the motion of a string floating around.
 
à la Wheeler-DeWitt equation
Or does it not exist at all
 
@Slereah That is unknown, but hoped-for.
@Danu No auxiliary d.o.f.?
 
7:44 PM
@ACuriousMind Oh yeah
That's what chapter 1 of my string book talks about
 
The crucial point is that you don't need to conceive of them as coordinates at all for string theory to work.
They can be just fields living on a 2D manifold with a 10D target space, you don't need to interpret that as embedding the 2D object into 10D
 
@ACuriousMind Yeah but it's more ugly :P
Right
like I said:
14 mins ago, by Danu
The interpretation as coordinates in spacetime is "external" in the sense that the formalism doesn't really tell you what the space $X^\mu$ takes values in should be
 
@Danu Well, but it is really just integrating the area element - that is kinda beautiful for its simplicity
 
@ACuriousMind Yeah, in the right notation it does look nice.
 
And it is sad that it's rather useless :(
 
7:47 PM
Yeah.
 
Having to introduce gauge d.o.f. into an already geometrically elegant formalism is...not pretty.
 
When writing proofs that are basically pure diagram chases
how can I emphasize which part of the diagram is "the conclusion" and which part is what you start with
color?
 
I'm not sure what you mean.
 
Use the usual proof symbols?
 
Are you writing the element you're chasing into the diagram?
 
7:49 PM
Yes
 
$\Box$
 
Slereah, I'm not talking about that.
 
Not sure there is a way to make that really clear visually
 
You don't understand if you've never chased diagrams :P
Example:
In the left diagram the top left is the conclusion
 
7:50 PM
@Danu Don't chase the diagram
 
in the one on the right, the bottom left $0$
 
You can never catch it
 
How do I emphasize it
 
Don't, just write accompanying text
 
Sigh...
 
7:51 PM
Maybe color the starting element and the one you wanted to get in different colors
But aside from that, it will just begin to look cluttered if you do anything more
 
I just wanted to color the final one
 
Draw the diagram in the shape of a cat
And the final element will be the nose
 
 
0
Q: How to deal with answers to duplicates?

Carl WitthoftQuestions which have been (or are in the process of being closed as a duplicate) often get answers posted anyway. What's the best way to deal with these answers? The problem with upvotes (even to the answers, let alone to the question) is that it more or less pulls focus away from the preferred...

 
8:07 PM
I just spilled beer over my computer---damnit.
 
8:28 PM
let $a,n \in \mathbb{Z}$ where $1\leq a \leq n$ and $1 < n$. I am told to prove that if $(a,n) \ne 1$ (they share a common factor) there exists an integer $b$ such that $ab \equiv 0~(mod~n)$ i.e. $\frac{ab}{n}$ leaves no remainder. basically, $ab=nq+r$ where $r=0$ so $ab=nq$. Shouldn't there always be a combination so that they are equal? even if $(a,n)=1$ I feel like there should still be a combination where $b=n$ and $q=a$
 
@Obliv Perhaps Mathematics?
 
if $(a,n) \neq 1$ then $a = kn$, so $ab = cn$ implies that $kb = c$
 
once I get desperate enough.. which will be in half an hour or so @danu
 
Since $b$ and $c$ are arbitrary integers it's not too hard
Oh wait
Only a common factor
nvm
I should go to bed
been a long day
 
vzn
9:06 PM
@ArnoldNeumaier ok. anyway theres an openminded/ enthusiastic/ similar-thinking audience/ "fan club" of at least 2 to digest and possibly even further develop/ expand on your (new) ideas esp wrt "interpretations" here on SE chat if you have some time, even intermittently.

 theory salon

theoretical computer science. highlight reel vzn1.wordpress.co...
 
@slereah are you still there
all I really need to prove is that there exists multiples of $a$ and $n$ such that $ab = nq$ to prove that $ab \equiv 0 (mod~n)$
 
0
Q: I want to cancel my vote

lucasI upvoted a post mistakenly. Then I tried to cancel my vote but I couldn't because my reputation isn't enough. How can I cancel my vote?

 
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