Mathematics and physics, in the summer 2011

This week in Philadelphia the String-Math 2011 Conference is underway, scheduled as the first of a series, with String-Math 2012 next summer in Bonn. Slides of the talks are listed here. There was also supposed to video, but the saved video seems to be a kind of UPenn login required, and I haven't been able to get the streaming video to work. Public talk by Cumrun Vafa crosses the classic message that strings have come to the rescue of physics, unifying QM and gravity, and which:

Flexible geometry of strings seems to explain all known interactions (at least in principle)

The techinical talks relate to a lot of ground, much of it having little to with string theory. Michael Douglas's talk surveys that related to find non-Perturbative formulations of quantum field theory hold that one could hope to have something to say about it exactly, but it contains many more questions than answers. I am most curious about David Ben-Zvi talk tomorrow, so hope that slides or video of that will be available.

The circle of ideas on gauge theory, geometric Langlands, TQFTs and representation theory gets even more attention than the mathematics of string theory this summer. In a few weeks will start with a two-part program on Luminy and then Cargese on double affine Hecke Algebras, the Langlands program, affine varieties of the flag, Conformal Field Theory, Super Yang-Mills theory. I do not know who the author is, but some person or group has written for the occasion a wonderful summary of the current activity in these and related areas of mathematics, see here. Next month, will be hosting a program KITP on non securities and dualities in QFT and Integrable systems that relate to some of the same topics will have.

In some other non-related news, if you understand French, you can listen to an interesting series of interviews with Pierre Cartier here. Finally, it was recently announced that $ 1 million this year is to share my colleague Richard Hamilton Shaw Prize for Mathematics with Demetrios Christodoulou. Richard Congratulations!

The Quantum story

Jim Baggott of The Quantum Story: A History in 40 moments is now here and I have already starting to see it in the bookstore. I read most of it a year or two ago, when he sent me a draft of the manuscript questions if I had a look at it, and very much enjoyed getting the chance to see it than would take. If you are looking for an excellent popular level physics book to read, I recommend that you consider this one, that is accessible for just about everyone, no matter what their background.

The subject of the book is in General, the story of quantum physics told historical with a structure of 40 vignettes. The first three chapters deal with mainly dramatic events of the period of the mid-1980s to the early 1930s during which physicists the basic structures of the quantum theory discovered struggled to get some sense of them. The following two takes the late 40s to mid-70s during which a long sequence of discoveries about elementary particle physics reed theoretical progress in quantum field theory and measure theory, culminating in the standard model fall into place in 1973. The material that Baggott works here is the subject of many other books, but he did a wonderful job of bringing together in a quick but very clear and entertaining story. Along the way, the individual stories he often tells contain fascinating details I never heard before, although I thought this was a subject I already knew too well.

The next last chapter starts with the 1950s and David Bohm, picking up the thread of subsequent debates and discoveries in connection with the general problem of interpretation of quantum mechanics. It brings this story on the pitch, explain some of the current questions that are still being discussed. The last chapter gives an appropriate short discussion of speculative ideas in quantum gravity and string theory which theoretical research have dominated the last few decades, make clear that they still have a long ways from the solid science which is the main subject of the book.

The LHC and the search for the Higgs makeup a final epilogue or 41st vignette, accurately describing the high expectations and the drama surrounding the last period of the long wait for new data that finally put an end this year. The story of quantum theory is not ready, and we all hope that very soon we will have some clues about where the next will go.

This week's Hype

The latest New Scientist has a much larger dose of M-theory/multiverse hype than I in one place have seen in a while. There is a four-part series on M-theory (here, here, here and here) by Mike Duff. It tells the story of the progress of modern physics in the last century, according to the dominant ideology: general relativity Kaluza-Klein extra dimensions, super-symmetry, Superstrings, branes, ends in the apotheosis of M-theory more than fifteen years ago. For the current state of affairs, Duff describes his "M-theory" predictions about the real world (that 4 qubits 31 different ways can be entangled, something discussed here). He ends with the M-theory multiverse and the following comments on whether this can ever be tested:

So is M-theory the final theory of everything? With rival attempts falsifiable predictions are hard to come by. Some generic functions such as supersymmetry or extra dimensions can be displayed on the collider experiments or in astrophysical observations, but the diversity of the possibilities offered by the multiverse allows precise predictions difficult.

Are all the laws of nature that we set theory of fundamental theory perceive? Or are some mere accidents? The jury is still out.

In my opinion, many of the important issues remain unresolved for quite some time. Finding a theory of everything is perhaps the most ambitious scientific undertaking in history. No one said that it would be easy.

Here he makes clear that, at least while he is still around and enjoy academic notoriety because of M-theory, there is no danger that it will be faced with a kind of test can not. He answered the critics of M-theory by claiming that the failures not important. It is the dominant paradigm, and as such will reign until someone comes up with a different theory of everything that is not a failure.

Elsewhere in the magazine there is a fawning article on the recent Bousso-Susskind paper (see here):

TWO of the strangest ideas in modern physics – that the Cosmos continually in parallel universes in which every conceivable outcome of each event happens splits, and understanding that our universe is part of a larger multiverse is-have are grouped in a single theory. This has lost a bizarre but fundamental problem in Cosmology and physics circles buzzing with excitement, as well as some bewilderment.

No critics of the idea were by the writer, with the discussion about blogs described as:

The paper has caused a flurry of excitement on Physics blogs and in the wider physics community. "It's a very interesting document that a lot of new ideas," says Don page, a theoretical physicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and author of the blog Cosmic Variance, thinks that the idea has some merit. "I have a confused skeptic a believer for the time being," he wrote on his blog. "I realized that these ideas fit very well with other ideas that I've been thinking about myself!"

One way or the other of Lubos "them on crack" to take on the subject was missed.

Finally, the meaning of it all summarized in an editorial that States that Bousso-Susskind finally pulls the plug on religion and replaces it with the Science:

Cosmologists can now begin to take God seriously, precisely because they him (or her) can explain away.

Year 3 Mathematics worksheet: time and calendars

An aspect to learn over time that is often neglected is the use of a calendar. They don't need any explanation for children who do not come across them before and they come in different formats. The month appears in this spreadsheet starts the week on Monday, although many start on Sunday. It may seem puzzling to children as to why there are some ' empty ' days at the beginning of the first week so it's a good idea to have a calendar with available all year.

This can lead to much discussion, such as the number of days in each month, why birthdays on any other day of the week every year etc.

Using a calendar (1)

Carroll diagrams: 2 year treatment of data

Carroll diagrams are named after the famous writer, Lewis Carroll and are a way of grouping things in a ' yes or no ' way. They can be as simple as just two boxes but usually they are seen as four boxes with two attributes. In this case the two characteristics are swimming and cycling and the children may or may not each.

Carroll diagrams were introduced in year 2 as a means of sorting, but it is not until at the end of the year or 3 years where she would meet these types of diagram. The second page has a number of questions about the diagram and suggesting that children go about trying to collect their own data and their own Carroll diagram of this data.

Thanks to urbrainy.com for this specific set of pages and they have a large selection of the treatment of data resources on their site.

Carroll diagrams 1

Rumor of the Week

A few months ago, CDF, the New York Times by releasing results claiming to see a resonance in the invariant mass spectrum of two rays produced together with a w. last week, they released a new analysis with twice as much data, alleging that the signal was still there, now at a statistical significance of almost 5 sigma.

I recently wrote about this here, the reasons for his skeptical, despite the high statistical significance. A very good reason for being a skeptic is that the CDF Tommaso Dorigo is not that this is really believe, go so far as to put his money where his mouth is, offering a $ 100 bet to back up his arguments. The crucial question in everyone's mind is been or D0, CDF of competition and sister detector at Fermilab, would the same thing in the data. If there really is something there, D0.

This Friday, there will be a wine and cheese talk on Fermilab D0, where the results will be revealed, and you can use this as a live video stream here. But, as one would expect, now that the D0 result is ready to be revealed, people do things like print jobs late on printers, etc., allowing editors to spread rumors. Blogs like this seem to be a place where such information tend to end up, so I can report a rumor (based on excellent sources) that Tommaso's right. D0 will on Friday report that nothing is there, that they have no evidence for a dijet resonance in the region of 110-170 GeV. They reject the CDF hypothesis of a resonance with a diameter of 4 OJ on a significance level of more than 4 sigma.

In other news, the LHC performed very well, with the official purpose of this week to achieve an integrated luminosity of fb-1, something that has been the official goal for the entire year (though, unofficially, 2-3 fb-1 if the more). Right now, they are around 8 fb-1. This kind of clarity should finally start to results that a Higgs in the region that are expected to exclude or see first indications if, in the next few months.

The KITP this week marks the beginning of a program on the first year of the LHC. Unfortunately, theorists, the only result data from the first year of the LHC had to shoot some of their favorite models, ruling from, for example, a large amount of parameter space where supersymmetry was expected to be found, which is the most popular theoretical idea of the last 30 years are considerably less popular. The first interview held at the KITP Program was this afternoon, and not with the LHC data, but with the alleged CDF resonance (it appears that news of the D0 result had not yet made it to Santa Barbara).

Update: the KITP talk is now available here.

Quick Links

The big news from the past few days is the release of more data by CDF which is still a bump in the invariant mass of two beams produced with a w. Resonaances gives an excellent description of this and the possible meaning. Tommaso Dorigo remains a skeptic.

I can't do better than the two of them on this story, but here's my summary to take on the situation:

With the new data, this may no longer be written off as a statistical fluke. 3 sigma you can claim off as such a fluke, but not 5 sigma.

The main reason to be skeptical but it is not the statistical significance, but the possibility that this is due to poor modeling of background. The signal is extracted from a huge background, so a small misunderstanding of the background would be the cause. If this is the case, expect that the new data does not change anything, you have to continue to see the effect as more data is analysed.

The fact that Tommaso a skeptic is carries much weight, as he is on the CDF experiment works and understand the problems. In general, the experimentalists to experiments that they are working on to make great discoveries, so tend to have their own results optimists. When someone skeptical about the outcome of their own experiment, that gives a break.

What would really be the case for the new physics here would be more compelling if the result is confirmed by one of the other experiments (DO at Fermilab, CMS or on the LHC ATLAS) that able to see the same effect as it's there. These groups have a certain motivation to confirm not only their competition from the discovery (raise the question why they don't find it first), but in a convincing way to shoot it down. This post by Pauline Gagnon of ATLAS says that they have nothing in their data 2010. It is expected that D0 is hard at work and should quickly free what they have found. ATLAS and CMS must also hard at work looking for the much larger 2011 examples. We will soon know the results, but the public comments from Dorigo and Gagnon not sounds to me like they would if they knew their experiments provisional confidential results confirm the CDF anomaly.

Finally, while there are numerous paper theory models out already with alleged explanation for this, are not really convincing. This is not an experimental result with theoretical explanation a naturally attractive.