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3:00 PM
Hamilton-Jacobi gives you a PDE.
which is great when you can do something with it
 
why does Hamiltonian give twice as many variables?
I was under the [probably wrong] assumption both work using generalised co-ordinates
 
I wonder if there are any python people here who have encountered this problem before:
for i in some list 1:
for j in some list 2:
 
in Hamiltonian mechanics you've got coordinates and momenta as independent
 
Ahhhh right
 
Hamiltonian mechanics is over the tangent bundle of the manifold
 
3:01 PM
Whereas in Lagrangian the co-ordinates encode all the information you need
 
which is of dimension 2n
 
Somehow in the 2nd layer of the loop, it is skipping the first element
 
Because you're minimising the functional
 
@BalarkaSen *cotangent. The Lagrangian is over the tangent.
 
@BalarkaSen you might as well me screaming the language of Cthulu in my face
What the hell even is a bundle
 
3:01 PM
@ACuriousMind Ah yes thanks
 
Obviously you just average then extremize Hamilton-Jacobi for a logarithmic form of the action for no reason and magic happens physics.drexel.edu/~bob/Quantum_Papers/Schr_1.pdf
 
my recollection of H-J is that (in the 1D case) you write $H=\frac{\partial S}{\partial t}$ and $p=\frac{\partial S}{\partial q}$
 
@Phase A smooth family of vector spaces parameterized by some space
 
What's S?
@BalarkaSen what exactly does parametrised mean here? I dont have much experience using such general terms
 
I literally have 0 reason to do mechanics on manifolds and tangent spaces, except for Arnold's re-writing Landau in that language, 0
 
3:03 PM
and then $H=\frac{p^2}{2m}+V(q)$ gives you the PDE $\frac{\partial S}{\partial t} = \frac{1}{2m}\left(\frac{\partial S}{\partial q}\right)^2+V(q)$
 
What's S sorry?
 
I think it goes under the name of Hamilton's characteristic function?
I honestly remember the prescription more than how one gets there
 
Another question
 
If $S = \int p dq - Hdt$ then $\partial S/ \partial t = - H$
 
@Phase If means you have a space $X$ and for each point $x \in X$ there is an associated vector space $E_x$
 
3:04 PM
main thing is that if you can (somehow) solve that PDE for $S$, you can differentiate it w/r/t $q$ to get $p$
 
Probably a very difficult one to answer without making it alien to my inferior vibrational consciousness but
 
@bolbteppa yeah, that looks right
 
How does one introduce a Lagrangian to [i assume] wave quantum mechanics
 
@bolbteppa I think it's important to mathematicians. Symplectic/contact geometry something something
 
i think the way that's usually done is via the path integral representation
 
3:05 PM
@BalarkaSen sorry I dont get it
 
thats fine
 
if you do that, you get the classical Lagrangian as playing a central role
 
You can rewrite Schrodinger's equation as the EL equations for a Lagrangian
 
@BalarkaSen I dont get what it means for each point have it's own vector space
@bolbteppa spooky. But is action always minimised in QM?
 
there's not a variational principle per se
 
3:07 PM
@Phase The classical example is the Moebius strip. To each point $x$ in the center circle of the Moebius strip, there is an associated line (vector space of dimension 1) that is "perpendicular to the circle". Look up a picture
 
but when you compute in the path integral method, the paths with less action will carry more weight than those with more action. (this is a bit simplistic, since it doesn't take into account interference between such paths)
 
@BalarkaSen do I just google "moebius vector bundle"?
@Semiclassical stuff like that just sounds like total voodoo
 
I think a comparison to the stationary phase approximation is helpful
suppose you write down the integral $\int_{-\infty}^\infty e^{-a x^2}e^{f(x)}\,dx$
 
Right now I just think of it as a green function for the Schrodinger equation, still have to do the string context
 
3:10 PM
with $a$ being some large positive number, and $f(x)$ not blowing up faster than $x^2$ at infinity
 
@BalarkaSen so is this an example of a vector bundle? Each point $x \in X$ of the circle has an associated vector... Space? Where does the space part come from
If you got bored of answering questions lemme know, dont wanna pester
@Semiclassical ok im following I think
But does the size of a affect how fast it blows up?
 
@Phase By vector space I mean, you know, a copy of $\Bbb R^k$. If $k = 1$ that's the real line, if $k = 2$ that's a plane. To each point in the circle you have that line that passes through it
 
if that integrand has a single peak, then we can approximate that integral using the stationary phase approximation
 
So it's a family of lines (1 dimensional vector spaces) parameterized over the circle
Also called a line bundle
 
the peak will be located where e$\frac{d}{dx}(-ax^2+f(x))=-2ax+f'(x)=0$. solving that gives us (hopefully) a point $x_0(a)$
 
3:13 PM
@BalarkaSen Ok.. I guess I get it, I feel like I wouldn't understand it properly though, like if you defined what generates the vector spaces orientation. Also, how old are ya? Idk whether to trust Ocelot
he's sneaky
 
and then you run the stationary phase approximation to get $e^{-f(x_0(a))}$ as the leading asymptotic
 
You don't need to know it properly; that's what it approximately is.
 
@Semiclassical Ive never heard of or used the stationary phase approximation
 
I'm 52
 
God damn that's a lie too
No one can be trusted
 
3:14 PM
basically, expand the exponent in the neighborhood of a critical point
 
as a taylor series?
 
yep. then the exponent is of the form $-f(x_0)-\frac{1}{2}f''(x_0)(x-x_0)^2$
 
Is there a reason for only taking it to second order? Is it because the exponent was x^2?
 
so then you can pull $e^{-f(x_0)}$ out of the integrand, and what's left is a Gaussian integral
yeah
 
everything in physics is black magic
 
3:16 PM
the Gaussian integral can then be computed exactly, but the key point is actually that $e^{-f(x_0)}$ factor
an example would probably have been better, tbh
i'm just not remembering one off the top of my head
 
dw about it dude you already took a fair bit of time explaining something interesting to me, I appreciate the time
it's also a nice change to at least understand a couple elements of it
 
key point is that, so long as the approximation is valid, you have $x_0$ as the controlling parameter despite the fact that there's no explicit variational principle
you trade "minimize the action" for "get a good enough approximation for the integral"
 
I see
 
'good enough' is a bit wishy washy, but that's sorta the name of the game when it comes to asymptotics
 
sorry if I missed something but where does EL enter the mix?
 
3:19 PM
EL will be the equivalent of that $\frac{d}{dx}(-ax^2+f(x))=0$ condition
here the analogy is limited since you get a particular value of $x$
whereas for EL your solution corresponds to a particular $x(t)$
 
Hm. Doubt i get it but its nice to get an understanding at least, even if incredibly limited
not your fault either, just my brain
Ought to get a refund
 
but in both cases there's some variational condition. it's calculus of variables versus calculus of variations.
 
Calculus of variations in a very broad sense is just calculus of variables along lines in a vector space.
 
Will I learn this in my degree?
 
in quantum, probably you'll see some stuff on stationary phase approsimation
 
3:22 PM
nice
 
and if you go far enough, you'll definitely see the path integral formulation.
 
I'm looking forward to starting the actual mathematical physics side of things
 
it does depend on teh scope of the course, mind
 
Oh crap i misused the term
Ocelot please spare me
I meant mathematical side of physics
 
🔫🔫🔫
 
3:23 PM
atm it's very... Definition and rote based.
 
if you're doing a single semester undergrad QM course then it probably will fall outside the scope
 
wait what there are emojis
 
@0celo7 the ting goes skrrra, boom boom boom, kka pak pak boom
 
Old
Old memes are punishable by ridicule
[points]
 
the trouble is really that you only need the path integral formulation when you want to go into QFT
 
3:24 PM
@Phase You want me to quote Pink Season?
 
I just like learning things for the sake of it
 
for undergrad QM you usually don't, so it's not a high priority
 
@Semiclassical not really
Just do Schwinger
 
@BalarkaSen $_{Sure \space you \space don't \space wanna \space quote \space the \space older \space album?}$
 
Weinberg gets very far without path integrals. Not sure how gauge theory works without it tho
 
3:26 PM
@Phase Pink Guy is also a great album
 
I have a gun is probably my favourite pink season song
Just because of how dumb it is
 
"need" is probably too strong a word
but the motivation for the path integral method is its use in moving from QM to QFT
I mean, there's a reason we talk about the QED Lagrangian and not the QED Hamiltonian
 
I love Rice Balls 'cuz it's lit
 
edups diss track XXX mashup is surprisingly good
 
lol
 
3:30 PM
have you heard it?
 
@Semiclassical Weinberg does QED with hamtiltonians :)
 
yes
 
Damn
Did you see Dan Bull's rap roast on edups?
 
You know maybe if you memed less you'd understand topoi
 
3:32 PM
@Phase Absolutely. Idubbbz tweeted it up
I love it
 
ew topoi
 
@BalarkaSen I don't own Tweetor
@0celo7 what's a topoi
 
me neither
i look at these guys to catch up with meme trends
 
I have FB but I mostly just use that to... Torture myself with flat earthers..
 
the most pretentious reference to topoi i've ever seen was in a music theory paper, amusingly enough
 
3:34 PM
There's a book like "topoi of music"
It's 800 pages of algebraic geometry and topoi
 
Yeah, and that was the context
 
btw for vector bundles
 
Mazzola wrote a book arguing that topoi theory was necessary to do music theory
 
Is there something that functions like a metric? I.e. something that coupled with a set of points $X$ generates the vector bundles at those points?
 
so for instance Dmitri Tymoczko responded to that book with this article: dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/files/publications/mazzola.pdf
opening paragraph is relevant: "For an American music theorist, Guerino Mazzola’s The Topos of Music (henceforth Topos) can be a forbidding book: dense, intricately systematic, and more complex in its mathematics than the writings of Allen Forte, John Clough, or David Lewin.
And where American theorists can be somewhat apologetic in their invocations of advanced mathematics, offering simplified tutorials for untrained readers, Mazzola can seem almost aristocratic in his disdain for nonmathematicians. If you can’t learn algebraic geometry, he sometimes seems to be saying, then you have no bu
 
3:37 PM
Wow
 
had to split it up to have it in one message
now, Mazzola wrote a response to that
 
To be fair you have to have a high IQ to understand Mozart
without a deep knowledge of theoretical physics a lot of the jokes will go over the listeners head
 
and again the opening paragraph or so is relevant
>>Once a writer was asked for the population of Mexico City by a German citizen. When the writer answered “it is about 6 million people, a million more, a million less”, his interlocutor replied “But a million is about the population of my hometown!”. Perhaps as our German friend, we could wish to know the aforementioned figure down to every single individual, but determining this number is an extremely complex labor. For some purposes, it is good enough to count with some approximation, but for many others we need more powerful mathematical tools in order to refine our knowledge.
sorry for the lenght of that
and right there is the most pretentious use of topoi theory I've ever seen
equating “If you cannot learn algebraic geometry [...], then you have no business trying to understand Mozart” to “If you cannot learn probability and statistics, then you have no business trying to count the population of a city.”
 
At least it's been done
 
is just hilarious in its incongruity
 
3:42 PM
Imagine a world where algebraic geometry did not apply to music :o
The most ridiculous thing I've seen is point set topology applied to psychology
 
Imagine a world where pure maths applied to real life
$_{bait}$
 
to act as though the connection between AG and Mozart is as obvious/compelling as between prob & stats and population count
is just laughable to me
 
When they say that Newtonian Mechanics is affine
 
Wish Mozart wrote his AG down in book form without all the music symbols
 
Do they just mean that for instance things like velocity is additive according to galilean invariance
 
3:45 PM
Velocity vector need not always be at the origin, hence affine
 
Yeah
Ty
 
@Phase once you pick an origin you've got a vector space.
 
Im surprised I've never heard the term affine before
 
it's a fine term
 
...
 
3:45 PM
@Phase They just mean that there is no god-given choice of origin, so an affine space faithfully represents our freedom to choose the origin.
 
@ACuriousMind yeah, in Newtonian mechanics that comes from the notion of Galilean invariance though right?
and then in SR it comes from the postulates
 
In SR it comes from Lorentz invriance
 
Poicaré invariance*
 
@Phase Uh. Galilean invariance entails, among other things, that physics remains unchanged under translations. It's just another name for "we're free to choose the origin" in that respect.
 
Yeah
I was just checking that my statement was equivalent
and that I wasn't misunderstanding
 
3:48 PM
So saying "the freedom to choose the origin comes from Galilean invariance" is pretty much tautological
 
yeah ik I was just trying to check if I was right :c
 
"comes from"->"basically is"
 
@Phase Handlebar moustache emoticon?
 
I think it's just an exceptionally sad :(
 
Idd
There's an emoji for exceptionally sad and exceptionally frustrated
for sad it's :c
for frustrated, the more spaces between the colon and the up arrow in ": ^)" the more the frustration
$: \space \space \space \space \space \space \space \space $^)
damn SE prevents it.
 
3:50 PM
..c
 
:         ^)
 
John did you do the same as me? Just copy paste \space multiple times? : p
 
No. Put four spaces first and it switches to fixed font
Fixed font
Fixed                      font
 
fixed
Whoa weird.
I assume this is for sharing code then
 
3:53 PM
Useful if you feel the urge for writing ASCII art :-)
 
I think the same happens if you do shift+enter
fixed
fixed font
yep
a fixed font button appears
 
huh
 code line 1
 code line 2
so that's how i can get code to show up in multiple lines
i've tried using "`" for that before, but it has problems with multiple lines
 
Bohmian mechanics and code formatting in a single day!!! :-)
 
god damn it.
 
Oh bloody hell
another LED fried
it actually smells burnt
 
3:56 PM
@Semiclassical whoaaaaa
How do do that
 
4 spaces
 
________
| o | o|
|  ..> |
| ____ |
| |  | |
|______|
 
L
 
posts the infinite centipede emoji art
 
It will take my Fortran game to a whole nother level
 
3:57 PM
there we go
 
You stole my son
You will pay
 
Test
 
$test$
makes sense
was just curious how the web script worked with it
 
geeeeeeeet dunked on
 
3:58 PM
if dunked:
    print(":c")
huh.
I need to add 8 spaces for embedding
and tab doesnt work either
that could be tedious
 
now I have got that sick boss fight tune stuck in my head again
 
lolyes
 
dudud dum dum du du du dudu
 
dudududu dudududu dudududududududududududu
 
This ain't Darude Sandstorm
 
4:00 PM
Ok i'm memed out im gonna play witcher, thanks for answering my questions chums
maybe not for you @BalarkaSen
But for some of us every day is dead meme day
 
hang on before I go
question
I get that energy is poorly defined a lot of the time in GR, but energy can be defined sometimes, and the concensus is that not conserved right? And this is a consequence of Noether's theorem not applying to time. Can energy be gained?
I dont wanna sound like a crank tho
 
@Phase The ADM energy is conserved when it is defined
 
Energy is conserved if the action is unaffected by displacing the system in time.
 
But i thought for GR as the metric isn't flat, displacing the system in time means that you'll end up with different action
 
4:08 PM
In some, but not all, spacetimes the action is changed by a shifting in time so energy is not conserved. The expanding universe is the obvious example.
 
spooky
anyway im gonna go play the Witcher DLCs, thanks for answering that last question
 
@Phase as an example, the Schwarzschild metric is static i.e. time independent. So shifting in time makes no difference.
 
to me the point is really that energy is not generically meaningful in GR
that doesn't mean there aren't cases where it becomes meaningful, to be sure
 
@Semiclassical I invite you to read Christodoulou's book
 
yeah, uh
 
4:10 PM
Take some heroin and get ready for the buuuuundles
 
no way
i got 99 problems but a bundle aint one
 
4:31 PM
@JohnRennie: It is my opinion that the universe is scale free. So, then, the scale of particle physics is a convenience for humans, not a particular order in the universe.
 
@0celo7 @ACuriousMind Tarski uses $\forall$ upside down and $\exists$ mirrored
 
@theDoctor you are of course free to hold whatever opinions you choose
 
@BernardoMeurer Ugh
 
In fact particle physics does become scale free at a high enough energy. Specifically this happens when particles are massless or their masses are insignificant compared to their energies.
This is known as conformal symmetry.
 
"Scale-free": the application of relativity and the lack of an absolute reference frame implies that ideas such as "planch length" and even the notion of the atom may be inapplicable in some domains.
 
4:34 PM
I mean, why?!
 
interesting
 
@Bernardo What are you reading
 
i think energies should not be in the equation to notice this.
masslessness maybe
i mean masslessness is probably a prerequisite.
 
@BalarkaSen His intro to Logic ^
 
it is us, of couse, who apply the scale onto perception.
 
4:35 PM
ah
 
course
 
I think it's just old notation
 
I don't know much about mathematical logic. Maybe you should learn and teach me
 
@theDoctor: most of us hereabouts are physicists (or their poor relation mathematicians) who work with physics all the time and are used to physical reasoning. We tend not to be easily impressed by vague statements.
 
otherwise a particle is a phenomen occuring in an otherwise n-dimensional space with no relation to distance of other particles except through entanglements.
 
4:36 PM
@BalarkaSen why do you want to know?
 
'cuz it's cool
 
i understand, yet models of physics start with vague ideas, yes?
i think for example, that the bias for neat equations has biased the understanding of reality, such that if the universe WERE actually scale-free, you wouldn't know it, because you couldn't encode it in an equation with physical units.
 
@theDoctor Not in the last 200 years or so, no.
 
@BalarkaSen I got a couple books on it yesterday. Tarski and this one:
 
@ACuriousMind: even einstein started with a vague idea -- it was just so radical he had to develop the formalisms himself
 
4:40 PM
@Bernardo Sweet
 
but isn't science, by its nature, collaborative? I mean equations impress students, but
 
I once wrote up a bunch of nonsense on the Godel's theorem
 
@theDoctor Tell that to Poincaré and Minkowski. Or Hilbert. You should read up on the relativity priority debate before making grandstanding claims.
 
@BalarkaSen I'm aiming to try and really understand consistency, completeness and so on
 
@ACuriousMind to be fair GR was only Einstein. He showed notes to Hilbert who stole the idea.
Einstein had a fully developed theory independently of Hilbert, but Hilbert came up with the action before Einstein.
 
4:42 PM
IT's not a grandstanding claim at all. It is the orthodoxy which has the burden of explaining why there should be a preferntial order to the universe. A scale-free system is prior to such.
I understand the respect to physics history, but the universe doesn't conform to physicists.
 
@0celo7 that's not really true. Other people also had the idea that gravity might eb a metric theory. Nordstrom for example.
 
@JohnRennie did they communicate?
 
@0celo7 yes
 
proof?
 
In theoretical physics, Nordström's theory of gravitation was a predecessor of general relativity. Strictly speaking, there were actually two distinct theories proposed by the Finnish theoretical physicist Gunnar Nordström, in 1912 and 1913 respectively. The first was quickly dismissed, but the second became the first known example of a metric theory of gravitation, in which the effects of gravitation are treated entirely in terms of the geometry of a curved spacetime. Neither of Nordström's theories are in agreement with observation and experiment. Nonetheless, the first remains of interest insofar...
 
4:48 PM
Einstein apparently had (most of?) the right answer in 1912 but thought it was wrong for 3 years
 
I'm an information theory person. It is abnormally improbable to have a scale like atomic physics suggests.
 
@bolbteppa yeah because GR violates Mach's principle which was holy at the time
 
GR has no direct applications at all, right? Imagine we didn't have GR. Is there any useful (with real-life applications) physical theory X that its development was (indirectly) dependent on GR, so that if there was no GR, there was no theory X?
 
It's unclear if GR has applications
 
GR is related to a scale-free system, so that implies there could be applications.
 
4:51 PM
what?
 
@0celo7 If you mean GPS, it suffices to know that GPS can work without GR
 
Not sure about that, contentious issue
What about black holes, cosmology, corrections to Kepler problem, perihelion, abbheration etc
 
those are not applications as of 2017
 
..will try to explain under the context of you orthodoxonauts.
first need to work out the relationship between a scale-free system and an n-dimensional space.
i believe they imply each other
 
4:55 PM
as if there are n-dimensions and no priveleged dimensions, then there is no basis in which to anchor a scale of atoms upwards to the cosmos.
 
@theDoctor you mean conformality
 
The Einstein equations are not conformally invariant...
 
possibly @bolbteppa. Thank you for anchoring my thinking to the language used by the orthodoxy.
conformal: is there a nice, succinct definition?
 
@theDoctor have you read any GR textbooks?
 
In mathematical physics, the conformal symmetry of spacetime is expressed by an extension of the Poincaré group. The extension includes special conformal transformations and dilations. In three spatial plus one time dimensions, conformal symmetry has 15 degrees of freedom: ten for the Poincaré group, four for special conformal transformations, and one for a dilation. Harry Bateman and Ebenezer Cunningham were the first to study the conformal symmetry of Maxwell's equations. They called a generic expression of conformal symmetry a spherical wave transformation. == Generators == The conformal group...
 
4:56 PM
i've only read biolgraphies of Einstein
and several informal presentations of GR, SR
 
@theDoctor why ignore the books which explain the actual details?
 
@theDoctor And that qualifies you to scorn us as orthodoxonauts?
 
Everytime I hear the word "orthodoxy" applied to mainstream physics, I can't help but think its original meaning fits perfectly: Belief in that which is correct.
 
I ignore them, with all due respect, because there is an unacknowledged ASSUMPTION in them all.
@ACuriousMind: lol
 
"I have seen the movie Interstellar, I know everything about GR"
 
4:58 PM
And yet they work i.e. they correctly predict the results of experiments.
Funny that ...
 
@theDoctor what is the assumption
@theDoctor at least you admit you purposely ignore the books which actually explain the logic of the subject and conceded you do not understand it in advance
 
It is totally unacceptible, except to those perhaps in the Middle Ages, to assume a preference of scale.
I think this comes after understanding the dual nature of light.
 
And yet that is what experiment tells us is the case
 
@theDoctor what is the preference for scale, what does that mean?
 
@theDoctor And light doesn't have a dual nature
 

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