Here are the slides for the talk I am giving today at the UQ Physics colloquium.
I will show the video Quantum levitation, and discuss what is and isn't quantum about it.
A good discussion of some of the issues raised is Laughlin and Pines article The Theory of Everything. A more extensive and introductory discussion by Pines is at Physics for the 21st Century.
Postscript.
Based on comments and questions afterwards, particularly from some undergraduates, there are few things I would do slightly differently.
I should have said what a Hamiltonian is: a function that defines the energy as a function of the system variables, e.g., the position and velocity of all of the particles.
The stratification of reality shown by my boxes is a simplification for schematic purposes. There is no clearly defined boundary between strata. For example, at the boundary between chemistry and physics one has chemical physics and physical chemistry. The boundary between biology and biochemistry is blurred. On the other hand, anatomy is qualitatively different to enzyme mechanisms. Acid-base equilibria is chemistry not physics.
Ben Powell emphasized to me that the claim that "superconductors exhibit broken U(1) gauge symmetry" is problematic and subtle. There is a long detailed paper, Superconductors are topologically ordered that I have read several times but don't really understand.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is your experience of using AI for research in condensed matter theory?
I have been dabbling a little with using AI (at a very basic level) to help me with some research problems. For example, in a recent prepr...
-
This week Nobel Prizes will be announced. I have not done predictions since 2020 . This is a fun exercise. It is also good to reflect on w...
-
The Ising model is a paradigm in both statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics. Today for most theorists it is so familiar that so...
-
Some of my colleagues and I have started an interesting discussion about how to teach quantum theory to undergraduates. We have courses in t...

No comments:
Post a Comment