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00:00 - 15:0015:00 - 23:00

15:07
@TobiasFünke just in case you need to hear it: if you find yourself feeling a bit drained by all these conversations, you might want to consider taking a break
Regarding the Heisenberg and Schrödinger picture, what would be the benefits of using one over another?
Do you have any specific situations where you would use one and not the other?
@naturallyInconsistent yes, it seems so
@imbAF There's another book by Van Der Waerden called Group Theory in Quantum Mechanics that is good and very physical IIRC
@User198 a question this broad should come with disclaimers of what you have already read on the topic
There are unfortunately not a lot of very good sources about this stuff
15:16
@TobiasFünke it is tiring and not normal; rest and recharge for another day
@User198 many-body physics and QFT uses the interaction picture (or sometimes the heisenberg picture) over the schrodinger picture
@TobiasFünke I would not blame the text
ok
nI, a while ago you mentioned that you wanted to start a new small (?) project about the "cold fusion" stuff. How is it going? Did you make progress?
@naturallyInconsistent Nothing advanced. Via canonical quantization the Heisenberg picture seems much more reasonable for me. Why would we use the Schrodinger picture than?
Was historically the Schrodinger picture first to come up?
@User198 The two pictures are mathematically equivalent. Finding one more "reasonable" than the other is in itself unreasonable :P
15:20
Understandable* than maybe
given two mathematically equivalent things, there is usually a better choice to make given the context
@User198 no. Both pictures are available right from the start. Heisenberg, obviously, started matrix mechanics with Heisenberg picture. But if you want to consider wavefunctions as is naturally and normally done in wave mechanics, you have to think at least a little bit about Schrödinger picture
And I would expect that many people find it more natural to think in terms of the state of a system evolving rather than the observables
Doing wave mechanics in Heisenberg picture would be weird lol the waves would just be stood still lol
@naturallyInconsistent True
@ACuriousMind True
Ok thanks
@DIRAC1930 Thanks
15:23
Note that we have yet to give a sensible answer to your question. Your question is just that large. There is a lot to think about.
If this question is for a homework assignment I wouldn't write that lol
What is Dirac trying to say specifically in the last paragraph
I came across this a while ago
It is in the last few pages of later editions of Diracs book on QM
How is this representative of an isotropic system? I would expect that if a system were isotropic, then no observables should depend on angle period
@DIRAC1930 I also read that long ago. Dirac never came to terms with renormalisation. He kept holding onto certain issues that he could never let go of, and this is one of them.
@SillyGoose No, isotropic just means that no direction is preferred, i.e. the quantities only depend on the relative angle between the two vectors and not e.g. on their angle to the z-axis or something like that
is it correct to also refer to isotropic systems as being rotationally invariant?
15:35
usually :P
...wait, when is it not? (yes it's nearly 3am here x_x)
but the literal meaning of rotationally invariant to me is consider some object $O \in X$ and group action $a: SO(3) \times X \to X$, then $O$ is rotationally invariant iff $a(g, O) = O \quad \forall g \in SO(3)$
so this is wrong?
@SillyGoose The $f_{pp'}$ in your picture is rotationally invariant under $p\mapsto Rp,p'\mapsto Rp'$ for any rotation $R$, i.e. $f_{pp'} = f_{Rp,Rp'}$
hmm okay i guess
i guess a one body interaction $f_\vec{p}$ would have to be constant to be rotationally invariant under the action of $SO(3)$ on the momenta
but a two body interaction has more freedom
this AI has been solving math problems better than humans... nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00406-7
2
it is called AlphaGeometry2
@PM2Ring nice 80s vibes
15:48
Did any of you guys learn effective field theory in your physics education
And does anyone have a good resource for learning renormalization group, abstracted out of any particular contexts and interests if possible.
i think it is getting more and more dangerous for researchers now. hopefully, AI can't solve open ended problems
like, an AI that comes up with something like General Relativity
i think AI can solve well defined problems, but maybe open ended problems require human touch
but math problems r usually well defined. so mathematician researchers r not safe
@SillyGoose I'm not sure what you mean by "learning effective field theory"
I guess i mean have a course offered at your institution
"effective" is just the name you give a field theory that's not "fundamental", but it's not somehow that you use completely different techniques for effective theories than for non-effective ones or whatever
Well you do, a little?
Like you need some methods to find the appropriate field theory
15:54
Yes i think there are some methods to construct effective field theories
there are at least textbooks on the subject :P
Yeah
Weinberg talks about it a bit
yes. the construction technique involves a path integral
Yes i think weinberg and coleman have written some of thenoriginal papers on this stuff
(sidney coleman)
But i am a bit confused about the difference between EFT and RG
seemingly RG is supposed to do also what building an EFT does? Or no
Does it?
if you mean stuff like getting the Fermi theory of the weak interaction from the Standard Model, that's to me just part of learning QFT, not some seperate "effective field theory" topic :P
@SillyGoose It depends on what "kind" of renormalization you're doing. The Wilsonian interpretation of renormalization produces a bunch of "effective" theories by lowering an actual cutoff in the theory, sure.
16:00
@Slereah The only example i know is that topological phases can be described by an effective topological quantum field theory “in the IR”. I think this is an instance of RG producing an effective field theory
@ACuriousMind what is the role of interpretation in renormalization?
I don't understand the question
Is the meaning of renormalization well defined in a physics sense?
That is perhaps the mathematics are shaky, but the actual meaning of renormalization is clear and constant if I were to ask a sample of physicists
there is more than one possible meaning
see e.g. this answer of mine for what I called there the "old" and "modern" view; these days I probably wouldn't insist on calling the Wilsonian viewpoint "modern"
I wish people would use a very simple toy model when explaining the Wilsonian point of view
16:32
do u think AI will be able to do open ended problems
like, say, inventing a new branch of math, or inventing Godel numbers or working on a new physics theory
Don't believe the hype. An "AI" that can do a narrow set of geometry problems should in no way make you think we're even remotely close to systems that can just "do math" or "do physics".
ACM, while I am also very skeptical, one should also not underestimate the (potential) power and ability of AI (in general, not related to the math/physics discussion here)
...also given the fact that things evolve very quickly
yes, nobody thought it would do the things it is doing now.
I am not worried about the jobs of mathematicians or physicists, but other problems coming to society or are here already
@RyderRude well, I wouldn't say it like this. But sure, it is hard to imagine how the world in 50 years, or even 10-20 years, looks like.
16:47
@TobiasFünke yes. hard to know what directions AI will take next
@TobiasFünke there are much bigger problems like automation vs capitalism
capitalism is a society which makes people work to be able to afford things
@TobiasFünke from where I'm standing everyone is constantly overestimating it :P
yes, there are real problems but they are often due to people just buying the hype and thinking it's actually "intelligent" and can do the jobs of humans or thinking it's close to that
@ACuriousMind u have studied some AI models. what is the feature of AI that makes u think it is fundamentally not like humans (in terms of things like : learning from experience and applying that knowledge)
u said u have looked into the LLM paper
but there are even more varieties of AI now
like Alpha Geometry 2
@RyderRude have you even read the article you linked? It's just an LLM coupled with a symbolic logic solver
also is it necessarily bad if society does invent machinery that can replace manual labor?
i think the hypothesis that AI is like humans assumes that the human mind is a computation (which it is to a great extent). the only question is : how significant are the non computational aspects of the human mind
16:56
it is just the cost of development
@ACuriousMind oh
hi friendsw
@SillyGoose Who claimed that was bad? :P
there is a nice little chapter in a literary analysis book Part I The tragedy of development (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_That_Is_Solid_Melts_into_Air)
capitalism just sucks i hope it ends in my lifetime
16:58
@Allie yes
@Allie but AI automation may bring something worse than capitalism
well the verbiage used by RR "mathematician researchers r not safe" suggests a negative connotation associated with their replacement (if successful)
Stephen Hawking has spoken about it @Allie
in america we had like 5 minutes of class consciousness when Luigi shot that CEO
middle class people just dont want to think they are anything like the poor. they want to think that they worked hard and they deserve their (relatively) cozy life while the poor people deserve the conditions they live in
when in reality they are much closer to the poor than our billionaire overlords
i think the generic mindset in america is that people want more for doing nothing, independent of class
> If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality
this is Hawking's quote. i think AI automation will probably bring something even worse than capitalism
the problem isnt automation. the problem is billionaire greed
17:03
how anxiety inducing
billionaires won't let any utopia happen. they will first come for the poor and then later cannibalise each other
the way i preserve my peace of mind is to remember that those billionaires are soulless deeply unhappy people with a gaping void in their life that they need to fill through more power
i think they may even artificially try to sustain capitalism because they have an emperor complex
@Allie yes. they are very sad people
we are not even living in the old days when manpower could overpower the ruling class. they have big weapons now
well we should all collectively act now so that we dont get to that point
@RyderRude we are right now. AI cannot replace humans currently
the overpowering is not through violence but through organization/striking
collective action is generically rare as people are really always out for themselves and their own values
17:09
@Allie they control the government
if all of us in the non-billionaire class stopped working society as a whole would come to a screeching halt
the issue is actually getting that to happen and actually being able to leverage collective power, because people are very divided
this is overwhelmingly apparent in how many people try to bandwagon as being victims of genuinely horrible situations (when they're not) for their own short term benefit. this is particularly evident in recent race-related events and covid.
@SillyGoose In Serbia there are curentlly large demonstrations going on for a few months already
it's how people are and always have been
yes. and social media keeps people divided. we don't have too much time now. if everything gets automated, they may decide that they don't need the working class anymore
17:12
im guilty of this myself. i find it difficult to want to connect to people who hold the belief that my identity is invalid and that i dont deserve my (life-saving) healthcare
it's difficult
it's a sad situation. and people won't unite until things get really bad
i mean
i think doomerism is ultimately harmful
@RyderRude so i dont like statements like this
yeah.. i try not to make such statements
maybe that will be the case, but stating it as an inevitability only gives you permission to resign
this world needs more positivity and its just so hard to have any but
i have learned that u have to believe in good things and they might just happen, cuz u perform better when u believe
17:25
exactly
Is there a connection between the exponential map from Lie algebra to Group and the fact that the unitary time evolution operator is $U = \exp(-itH)$?
@User198 Sure, the matrix exponential for matrices on $\mathbb{C}^n$ maps the algebra of self-adjoint operators into the Lie group of unitary operators. You'll have to ask a more specific question to get more specific answers
@ACuriousMind Thanks. I just wanted to see the connection.
18:13
reminder to me: do not comment under posts about superluminal communication
lol
in most cases it will lead to an endless discussion
hi tobias!!!!!
18:33
hey Allie :) how are you doing?
I followed your discussion with RR and Goose ^^
19:18
> Where nearly all authors prior to the 1980s remained active more than a decade after their initial publication, this was the case for 50% or less by the 2010s. Consequently, the fraction of theoretical physicists who achieve full academic careers have diminished significantly in the last four decades.
> Additionally, we study correlations between author survivability and potential success factors, inferring that early author productivity and collaborative efforts have become increasingly strong determinants over time.
19:54
Why does this wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugate_variables#Fluid_mechanics

says "the action itself (or velocity potential) is the conjugate variable of the density".

Velocity potential is action? Have you heard anything about that?
20:15
is this just describing maximization of entropy?
 
1 hour later…
21:17
I am a bit confused. Why would we expand a function $\delta n(\vec{p})$ in spherical harmonics if the system is isotropic in $\vec{p}$?
@SillyGoose may I ask what's the context/ what book is this?
@qwerty This is Pines and Nozieres book on Quantum Liquids
You can expand any function on $\mathbb{R}^3$ in spherical harmonics, I'm not sure what the question is
but it makes no sense to expand a function that is constant on the sphere in spherical harmonics (it is way overkill)
and they do not mention that they are setting up a relation that holds in more generic situations
Are you sure you understand correctly what "isotropic" means in this case? :P
21:23
well i think i must be misunderstanding
because you already posted one example today where you thought it implied some function was constant but it wasn't
yes but here the function is just indexed by one $\vec{p}$ so there is not the freedom afforded in the other example
in any case, the expansion into harmonics is valid, if perhaps confusing to you. Why not just continue reading and see what they'll do with it?
i know what they will do with it. but i am more confused about what this has to do with isotropic systems. if anything, this expression is what is wanted to precisely deal with anisotropic systems
i think perhaps there is just some strange verbiage being used because later in the book it is stated:
which is the expected result for an isotropic situation, that you only have the 00 spherical harmonic involved (the constant function)
If you already read that far, I'm even more confused what the question is/what you expect someone here to contribute
21:30
well that bit i just found. but in any case i still didn't trust that i was understanding the situation correctly.
@ACuriousMind what was the case where 'isotropic' isnt the same as 'rotationally invariant' you alluded to earlier?
I didn't have anything specific in mind
there was no allusion, I just said "usually" because I didn't want to think too hard about edge cases :P
hahaha >.>
i was fairly sure people used the terms synonymously, I was then worrying it was sloppy to do so
@SillyGoose do they later on deal with perturbations from isotropy?
@qwerty not that i have gleaned so far, but i have only been looking around in the first chapter of five
21:50
completely separately, is it fair to argue that the concept of a "coordinate chart" is somehow more general than that of a "coordinate system", because you could define it without a choice of basis, by defining it as a chart from a subset of a manifold to a general vector space rather than $\mathbb{R}^n$? whereas a coordinate system is defined as the corresponding set of linear functions on $\mathbb{R}^n$, which means you must implicitly choose some basis e.g. the standard basis?
But...we don't define coordinate charts as maps to general vector spaces
we define them as maps to $\mathbb{R}^n$
my guess as to what the book is saying is that the system is initially isotropic and that the changes in distribution $\delta n$ can be generically anything
@ACuriousMind serge lang does in "introduction to differential manifolds 2nd ed."
@ACuriousMind You don't even define your manifolds on Galois fields?
i agree it's not exactly the most popular statement
but I was trying to pick at where exactly we introduce the idea of a basis
21:55
locally ringed spaces have entered the chat
@qwerty Basis of what
the manifold itself is not a vector space, it doesn't have a basis
well, coordinate bases. originally I thought it was when you introduce the idea of a tangent space.
but now I'm thinking maybe it's implicit earlier than that
The tangent spaces are vector spaces and have bases, sure. Every coordinate chart (to $\mathbb{R}^n$) induces a basis $\partial_\mu$ of the tangent spaces
It's not more complicated or subtle than that :P
Hmmm this kinda got started when I was reading the princeton companion to mathematics
It seems they do not want to privilege one basis. So, what they say is that a coordinate system is specified by ``a choice of basis for the linear functions on $\mathbb{R}^n$''.
22:11
Hello, a little bit of a fun question
If energy and matter are equivelent, is this statement logically correct?
" The stuff in the universe is called Matter" or " the universe is made out of spacetime + matter"
Usually if you look up components of universe you find energy , matter, dark energy, dark matter, excluding the dark stuff, can we just equate energy and matter and call everything inside the universe "matter"
@qwerty I really do not understand this statement
Do you? If so, could you explain?
I would've said exactly what ACM said, and I think I've never seen any different statement
2
Q: Thinking of basis elements of the dual space as coordinate functions

QFTheoristI'm a student of Physics self learning representation theory from Peter Woit's book and I am having a bit of trouble understanding a few concepts related to the dual space $V^{*}$ of a vector space $V$. I have seen dual spaces before but I am a bit rusty it seems. I understand that it is the spac...

22:32
@TobiasFünke only sort of. I have work now, I'll reply properly after or when I take a break
sure. I will go to bed :d Have a nice day, and see you around!
good night! :)
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