Scaling Laws in Particle Physics and Astrophysics
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Francis E. Low
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES F R A N C I S E . L OW 1 9 2 1 – 2 0 0 7 A Biographical Memoir by DAVID KAISER AND MARC A . K A S T N E R Any opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences. Biographical Memoir COPYRIGHT 2010 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES WASHINGTON, D.C. Courtesy of MIT Archives. FRANCIS E. LOW October 27, 1921–February 16, 2007 BY DAVID KAISER AND MARC A . K ASTNER RANCIS E. LOW, A MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Fsince 1967, died on February 16, 2007, in Haverford, Pennsylvania. His career exemplified the maturing of theo- retical physics in the United States during the years after World War II. Low also experienced some of the new roles for physicists, from organized political engagement and consulting on national security issues to high-level university administration. One of Low’s landmark articles helped to lay the groundwork for the renormalization-group approach in quantum field theory, a seminal technique in condensed- matter and particle physics. He also contributed influential approximation techniques for treating particle scattering. EARLY YEARS Low was an only child, who lived near Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. His mother’s parents were physi- cians and socialists. In fact, his grandfather helped found the Socialist Party of America. His mother also became a doctor. She made house calls at night in Greenwich Village until she turned 80, treating patients such as anthropolo- gist Margaret Mead. -
Quantum Mechanics Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD)
Quantum Mechanics_quantum chromodynamics (QCD) In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is a theory ofstrong interactions, a fundamental forcedescribing the interactions between quarksand gluons which make up hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type of Quantum field theory called a non- abelian gauge theory with symmetry group SU(3). The QCD analog of electric charge is a property called 'color'. Gluons are the force carrier of the theory, like photons are for the electromagnetic force in quantum electrodynamics. The theory is an important part of the Standard Model of Particle physics. A huge body of experimental evidence for QCD has been gathered over the years. QCD enjoys two peculiar properties: Confinement, which means that the force between quarks does not diminish as they are separated. Because of this, when you do split the quark the energy is enough to create another quark thus creating another quark pair; they are forever bound into hadrons such as theproton and the neutron or the pion and kaon. Although analytically unproven, confinement is widely believed to be true because it explains the consistent failure of free quark searches, and it is easy to demonstrate in lattice QCD. Asymptotic freedom, which means that in very high-energy reactions, quarks and gluons interact very weakly creating a quark–gluon plasma. This prediction of QCD was first discovered in the early 1970s by David Politzer and by Frank Wilczek and David Gross. For this work they were awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics. There is no known phase-transition line separating these two properties; confinement is dominant in low-energy scales but, as energy increases, asymptotic freedom becomes dominant. -
Courier Volume 45 Number 6 July/August 2005
INTERNATIONACERL JOURNAL OF HIGH-ENERGNY PHYSIC S COURIER VOLUME 45 NUMBER 6 JULY/AUGUST 2005 LABORATORIES FREDHOYLE LAKE BAIKAL SLAC reorganizes The life of a pioneer in The next step towards forthe future p6 nuclear astrophysics pl5 higher energies p24 Linde Kryotechnik AG & Linde BOC Process Plants LLC 4.5K Helium Coldbox for the Spallation Neutron Source at ORNL Coldbox in final stage of fabrication at the Linde shop in Coldbox ready to load on special the Port of Catoosa, Oklahoma, USA low clearance trailer Coldbox in operation at the SNS Central Helium Liquefier Linde KyotechnikAG Phone:+41 (0)52 304 05 55 Linde BOC Process Plants LLC Phone:+1 918 250 8522 DaettlikonerstrasseS Fax: +41 (0)52 304 05 50 Cryogenic Plants and Services Fax: +1 918 250 6915 CH-8422 Pfungen Email: [email protected] 3522 East 61st Street [email protected] Switzerland www.linde-kryotechmk.ch Tulsa, OK 74133-1923/USA www.lindebocpp.com X-ftaqr Oefecfor Digital Puke Processor XR-tOOCR at 149 eV FWHM Resolution No Liquid Nitrogen PX4 Solid State Design Digital Pulse Processor Power Supply Easy to Use Shaping Amplifier Low Cost MCA Features APPLICATIONS • Trapezoidal shaping to reduce • Nuclear Physics ballistic deficit • Synchroton Radiation • Wide range of shaping time settings • High Energy Physics • High count rate capability • Neutron Experiments • High throughput • Astrophysics • MCA with 8 k channels • Research & Teaching • High energy resolution • Nuclear Medicine • Excellent pile-up rejection • X-Ray Fluorescence • Enhanced stability • USB interface XR100CR X~Ray Detector XR100CR fitted for vacuum • Software instrument control, data with P;X4 Digital Pulse applications Visit Us Now Processor, Power Supply, www.amptek.com acquisition and analysis Shaping Amplifier & MCA • Oscilloscope mode available AMPTEK Inc. -
Nobel Lecture by Toshihide Maskawa
WHAT DOES CP VIOLATION TELL US? Nobel Lecture, December 8, 2008 by Toshihide Maskawa Kyoto Sangyo University, Kyoto 603-8555, Japan. I would first like to thank the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation for awarding me this honour, of which I had never even dreamt. I was born in 1940, the son of a furniture craftsman in the city of Nagoya, in Japan. My father wanted to change his job and was taking a correspondence course to become an electrical engineer, while he was a trainee furniture craftsman. However, he told me that he could not really understand sine and cosine, since he had not received a basic education. Eventually, though, he did manage a small furniture factory employing a few craftsmen and worked there himself. But this came to nothing because of the War, that reckless and miserable war which our country caused. After the War, he displayed in front of his house the door hinges, wood screws and other pieces of furniture, which remained at hand. They sold quite well. Getting a taste for selling, he became a merchant dealing with sugar as an ingredient for cakes. He still wanted to boast of his knowledge of electricity, but he could not find anyone suitable to explain it to. One day, though, he found a good tar- get: his son. In those poor days after the war, almost all the houses were without bath- rooms and so people went to the public bath. On his way to and from the public bath, he boasted of his knowledge: Why do three-phase current mo- tors rotate? Why don’t the solar and lunar eclipses occur every month? He explained proudly that it was because of the revolution planes of the earth around the sun, and of the moon around the earth, which are tilted at an angle of 5 degrees. -
The Strong and Weak Senses of Theory-Ladenness of Experimentation: Theory-Driven Versus Exploratory Experiments in the History of High-Energy Particle Physics
[Accepted for Publication in Science in Context] The Strong and Weak Senses of Theory-Ladenness of Experimentation: Theory-Driven versus Exploratory Experiments in the History of High-Energy Particle Physics Koray Karaca University of Wuppertal Interdisciplinary Centre for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT) University of Wuppertal Gaußstr. 20 42119 Wuppertal, Germany [email protected] Argument In the theory-dominated view of scientific experimentation, all relations of theory and experiment are taken on a par; namely, that experiments are performed solely to ascertain the conclusions of scientific theories. As a result, different aspects of experimentation and of the relation of theory to experiment remain undifferentiated. This in turn fosters a notion of theory- ladenness of experimentation (TLE) that is too coarse-grained to accurately describe the relations of theory and experiment in scientific practice. By contrast, in this article, I suggest that TLE should be understood as an umbrella concept that has different senses. To this end, I introduce a three-fold distinction among the theories of high-energy particle physics (HEP) as background theories, model theories and phenomenological models. Drawing on this categorization, I contrast two types of experimentation, namely, “theory-driven” and “exploratory” experiments, and I distinguish between the “weak” and “strong” senses of TLE in the context of scattering experiments from the history of HEP. This distinction enables to identify the exploratory character of the deep-inelastic electron-proton scattering experiments— performed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) between the years 1967 and 1973—thereby shedding light on a crucial phase of the history of HEP, namely, the discovery of “scaling”, which was the decisive step towards the construction of quantum chromo-dynamics (QCD) as a gauge theory of strong interactions. -
Verlinde's Emergent Gravity and Whitehead's Actual Entities
The Founding of an Event-Ontology: Verlinde's Emergent Gravity and Whitehead's Actual Entities by Jesse Sterling Bettinger A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Claremont Graduate University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Faculty of Religion and Economics Claremont, California 2015 Approved by: ____________________________ ____________________________ © Copyright by Jesse S. Bettinger 2015 All Rights Reserved Abstract of the Dissertation The Founding of an Event-Ontology: Verlinde's Emergent Gravity and Whitehead's Actual Entities by Jesse Sterling Bettinger Claremont Graduate University: 2015 Whitehead’s 1929 categoreal framework of actual entities (AE’s) are hypothesized to provide an accurate foundation for a revised theory of gravity to arise compatible with Verlinde’s 2010 emergent gravity (EG) model, not as a fundamental force, but as the result of an entropic force. By the end of this study we should be in position to claim that the EG effect can in fact be seen as an integral sub-sequence of the AE process. To substantiate this claim, this study elaborates the conceptual architecture driving Verlinde’s emergent gravity hypothesis in concert with the corresponding structural dynamics of Whitehead’s philosophical/scientific logic comprising actual entities. This proceeds to the extent that both are shown to mutually integrate under the event-based covering logic of a generative process underwriting experience and physical ontology. In comparing the components of both frameworks across the epistemic modalities of pure philosophy, string theory, and cosmology/relativity physics, this study utilizes a geomodal convention as a pre-linguistic, neutral observation language—like an augur between the two theories—wherein a visual event-logic is progressively enunciated in concert with the specific details of both models, leading to a cross-pollinized language of concepts shown to mutually inform each other. -
The Early Years of String Theory: a Personal Perspective
CALT-68-2657 THE EARLY YEARS OF STRING THEORY: A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE John H. Schwarz California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA 91125, USA Abstract arXiv:0708.1917v3 [hep-th] 3 Apr 2009 This article surveys some of the highlights in the development of string theory through the first superstring revolution in 1984. The emphasis is on topics in which the author was involved, especially the observation that critical string theories provide consistent quantum theories of gravity and the proposal to use string theory to construct a unified theory of all fundamental particles and forces. Based on a lecture presented on June 20, 2007 at the Galileo Galilei Institute 1 Introduction I am happy to have this opportunity to reminisce about the origins and development of string theory from 1962 (when I entered graduate school) through the first superstring revolution in 1984. Some of the topics were discussed previously in three papers that were written for various special events in 2000 [1, 2, 3]. Also, some of this material was reviewed in the 1985 reprint volumes [4], as well as the string theory textbooks [5, 6]. In presenting my experiences and impressions of this period, it is inevitable that my own contributions are emphasized. Some of the other early contributors to string theory have presented their recollections at the Galileo Galilei Institute meeting on “The Birth of String Theory” in May 2007. Since I was unable to attend that meeting, my talk was given at the GGI one month later. Taken together, the papers in this collection should -
Arxiv:Hep-Ph/0703178V1 16 Mar 2007 Eta Eorn Huddcyt Htn I H Following the Via Photons to Decay Should S Mesotrons Force
FERMILAB-CONF-07-48-T Mesotron Decays and the Role of Anomalies William A. Bardeen Theoretical Physics Department Fermilab, MS 106, P.O. Box 500 Batavia, IL 60510, USA March 15, 2007 Puzzles associated with Yukawa’s mesotron theory of nuclear interactions led to the dis- covery of “anomalies” in quantum field theory. I will discuss some of the remarkable conse- quences of these anomalies in the physics of elementary particles. In 1935 Hideki Yukawa postulated that nuclear forces were ascribed to a new massive scalar field that coupled to neutrons to protons. To explain the saturation of the nuclear forces, the new mesotrons were required to have a mass of order 200 me, and a coupling a few times larger than that associated with the electric charge. The terms mesotron was used to describe a particle of intermediate mass, much heavier than the light electron and much lighter than the neutron and proton, the constituents of the atomic nucleus. Indeed, in 1937, a new meson of intermediate mass was discovered as the dominant part of the hard component of cosmic rays. It was natural to associate this meson with the field that Yukawa had proposed to explain the nuclear force. Shoichi Sakata played an important role in the struggle to understand the physics of the new Yukawa mesotrons and their relation to the new mesons seen in cosmic rays. arXiv:hep-ph/0703178v1 16 Mar 2007 Early estimates of the lifetime of the mesotron were based on Fermi’s theory of β-decay. These estimates, in the range of 10−8 to 10−7 sec, were considerably shorter than the lifetime observed for the cosmic ray mesons, ∼2 10−6 sec. -
Physics and Feynman's Diagrams » American Scientist 6/3/10 12:09 PM
Physics and Feynman's Diagrams » American Scientist 6/3/10 12:09 PM FEATURE ARTICLE Physics and Feynman's Diagrams In the hands of a postwar generation, a tool intended to lead quantum electrodynamics out of a decades-long morass helped transform physics David Kaiser George Gamow, the wisecracking theoretical physicist who helped invent the Big Bang model of the universe, was fond of explaining what he liked best about his line of work: He could lie down on a couch and close his eyes, and no one would be able to tell whether he was working or not. A fine gag, but a bad model for thinking about the day-to-day work that theoretical physicists do. For too long, physicists, historians and philosophers took Gamow's joke quite seriously. Research in theory, we were told, concerns abstract thought wholly separated from anything like labor, activity or skill. Theories, worldviews or paradigms seemed the appropriate units of analysis, and the challenge lay in charting the birth and conceptual development of particular ideas. In the accounts that resulted from such studies, the skilled manipulation of tools played little role. Ideas, embodied in texts, traveled easily from theorist to theorist, shorn of the material constraints that encumbered experimental physicists (tied as they were to their electron microscopes, accelerators or bubble chambers). The age-old trope of minds versus hands has been at play in our account of progress in physics, which pictures a purely cognitive realm of ideas separated from a manual realm of action. This depiction of what theorists do, I am convinced, obscures a great deal more than it clarifies. -
A Brief History of String Theory
THE FRONTIERS COLLECTION Dean Rickles A BRIEF HISTORY OF STRING THEORY From Dual Models to M-Theory 123 THE FRONTIERS COLLECTION Series editors Avshalom C. Elitzur Unit of Interdisciplinary Studies, Bar-Ilan University, 52900, Gières, France e-mail: [email protected] Laura Mersini-Houghton Department of Physics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3255 USA e-mail: [email protected] Maximilian Schlosshauer Department of Physics, University of Portland 5000 North Willamette Boulevard Portland, OR 97203, USA e-mail: [email protected] Mark P. Silverman Department of Physics, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06106, USA e-mail: [email protected] Jack A. Tuszynski Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 1Z2, Canada e-mail: [email protected] Rüdiger Vaas Center for Philosophy and Foundations of Science, University of Giessen, 35394, Giessen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] H. Dieter Zeh Gaiberger Straße 38, 69151, Waldhilsbach, Germany e-mail: [email protected] For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/5342 THE FRONTIERS COLLECTION Series editors A. C. Elitzur L. Mersini-Houghton M. Schlosshauer M. P. Silverman J. A. Tuszynski R. Vaas H. D. Zeh The books in this collection are devoted to challenging and open problems at the forefront of modern science, including related philosophical debates. In contrast to typical research monographs, however, they strive to present their topics in a manner accessible also to scientifically literate non-specialists wishing to gain insight into the deeper implications and fascinating questions involved. Taken as a whole, the series reflects the need for a fundamental and interdisciplinary approach to modern science. -
Neutrino Mass and Mixing – the Beginning and Future –
Nuclear Physics B Proceedings Supplement Nuclear Physics B Proceedings Supplement 00 (2012) 1–4 Neutrino mass and mixing – The beginning and future – M. Kobayashi High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan Abstract The early history of neutrino mixing will be discussed with a focus on the birth of the MNS theory. Keywords: two neutrinos, MNS matrix 1. Sakata Model Another important aspect of the Sakata model is the fact that the weak interactions of hadrons can be ex- The first evidence of strange particles was found in plained by two types of transitions among the funda- cosmic ray events in 1947. Much progress in under- mental triplets: standing these particles was made in the early 1950’s, in particular after the operation of accelerators started. p The discovery of strange particles made it difficult to ↑↓-& . (1) regard all of the known hadrons as fundamental objects n Λ since there were so many. This pattern of the weak interaction is similar to the In 1956, Sakata proposed a model known as the weak interaction of the leptons, Sakata model [1], in which all the hadrons, both strange and non-strange, are composite states of a fundamental ν triplet formed from the proton, the neutron, and the Λ ↑↓-& . (2) particle. e µ Shoichi Sakata was born in 1911. He was a collabora- tor of Yukawa for some time. He was appointed profes- At that time the neutrino was thought to consist of a sor of Nagoya University when its physics department single species. This similarity of the weak interaction was established in 1942. -
Stanley Mandelstam, 1928 2016: )£
Stanley Mandelstam, 1928 2016: Brief Biography andStanley Selected Mandelstam Publications: with Commentary1 Brief Biography and Selected Publications with Commentary ⧢哇 £ Ling-LieLing-Lie ChauChau (喬玲麗)) University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA Professor Emerita in Physics and [email protected] GGAM (Graduate Group of Applied Mathematics) University of California, Davis, CA95616 The enduring in uences of Stanley Mandelstam's publications are deep and diverse. They a ect almost all the current major research e orts in theoretical and mathematical physics that try to deepen our understanding of the physical universe. Reviewing Stan- ley's accomplishments o ers a rare opportunity for everyone interested, experts as well as nonexperts, to gain a perspective about the current status of theoretical and mathe- matical physics and what to look for in the future. This paper presents a brief biography of Stanley and a selection of his publications, grouped together according to subject matters, with commentary.2 Fig. 1. Stanley Mandelstam at the 1961 Solvay Conference.3 £Professor Emerita in Physics and GGAM (Graduate Group of Applied Mathematics), UC Davis. 1 A contribution to the \Memorial Volume1 for Stanley Mandelstam," editors N. Berkovits, L. Brink, L. L. Chau, K. K. Phua and C. Thorn (World Scienti c Publishing, to be published in 2017). It is referred to as \the Memorial Volume" in the rest of the paper. 2 For a very short highlight of this paper, see author's Physics Today Obituary for Stanley Mandelstam, May issue 2017. About the genesis of these two papers see the Acknowledgments in this paper. 3 The photo is cropped from the wall-size photo of the 1961 Solvay conference on the 4th oor of the UC Davis Physics Department.