DOCSLIB.ORG

Thom Curtright

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Thom Curtright Thom Curtright University of Miami Talk presented at BASIC 2019, Saturday, 12 January. ========== Albert De Roeck briefly described the vacuum stability issue in his talk last Tuesday. This brought to mind my 1977 Caltech PhD thesis ... wherein "Renormalization group analysis is used to show the supersymmetric point in the effective coupling constant space is an unstable fixed point for several model gauge theories. The physical significance of this result is discussed in terms of the stability of the semiclassical ground state." This work extended ideas in an earlier paper ... In fact, if you search InSPIRE for title words "vacuum", "stability", and "supersymmetry" before the year 2000, this is the only paper that comes up. My thesis dealt with "toy" models, but I believe the essential idea applies to the standard model as well. Under RG flow in terms of the scalar field expectation value, the effective potential evinces a stable vacuum iff the effective quartic scalar field couplings remain non-negative. For a supersymmetric model this is guaranteed because the quartic scalar couplings are the squares of Yukawa and/or gauge couplings. More Reminiscences about the 20th century Afshordi’stalk on Thursday provided an argument against having very high mass elementary particles, such as would appear along linearly rising Regge trajectories in string theory. Perhaps higher dimensions circumvent his argument. In any case, string theories in higher dimensions yield not only high mass excitations of the string, but in addition, they provide such states in the form of rather exotic rotation group representations – neither totally symmetric nor totally antisymmetric tensors. This brought to mind another problem that I worked on during the last century. During my last several months as a Robert R. McCormick post-doctoral fellow from 1978-1980, at the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago, I suppose out of early winter boredom, I was thinking about string theory. In particular, I was thinking about the local fields that can couple to the string world- sheet, namely, the Kalb-Ramond field and its higher-dimensional extensions. 1 I worked out an array of ghost fields for such antisymmetric tensors, including “ghosts for ghosts.” Cosmas Zachos then reminded me that Paul Townsend had given a talk about such things at the Stonybrook Supergravity Workshop, 27-29 September 1979. I looked up the paper corresponding to Paul’stalk and noticed some disparities between my results and his, so I wrote a letter to him. Paul wrote back to me, although nothing resulted directly from this correspondence, but I continued to think about the subject as a background mental thread. Winter continued. I slugged through, traveling back and forth between Hyde Park and Homewood Illinois on the “Highliners” of the IC, now known as the Metra Electric main line. 2 Then in early 1980, for various other reasons that are no longer completely clear, it occurred to me to consider other gauge fields based not just on totally symmetric tensors (such as Einstein gravity) or totally antisymmetric tensors (such as the Kalb-Ramond field) but instead on tensors of any rank with arbitrary permutation symmetry on their indices. For the simplest example, there is the T[ab]c field. The free field formalism for such gauge fields was not very diffi cult to carry through, in principle, although it involved the usual débauche of indices. I wrote this down in February 1980, sent it out as an EFI preprint, solely authored, and I submitted it to Physics Letters B. 3 4 I continued working on the subject in collaboration with Peter Freund, in an effort to construct interacting theories for such fields, while waiting to hear from Physics Letters. Eventually the journal responded. The Referee rejected my solo paper. The Editor sided with the referee. 5 On the other hand, the follow-up paper with Peter Freund was accepted by Nuclear Physics B without a fuss. This was the second of two papers that I wrote with Peter. There was an opportunity to write a third paper, but that’sa story for another occasion. 6 I was greatly saddened when Peter died last year, on 6 March. I shall always remember him and our work together. 7 There is an evocative statement in this paper which I cannot resist bringing to your attention. Now, Peter and I were certainly not thinking about axions when we wrote this paper. Nor was anyone else in April 1980, at least not in a cosmological setting. On the other 3 hand, if you set g = 1/m in the above, the resulting value for the mass is m 10 eV, which is on a par with the current best estimates for the axion mass. 8 I mulled over the Referee’sremarks about my solo paper and, in the meantime, I moved to the University of Florida in Gainesville. (Enough of Chicago winters already!) I soon settled into a routine there. Time seemed to pass quickly. But I did not forget about mixed-symmetry tensor fields. I wrote another paper that used such gauge fields in the context of supersymmetry, in twelve-dimensional spacetime, just for fun, mostly. 9 10 Alas, this paper was also panned by the referee and again it went unpublished. I was beginning to think that no one cared about such esoteric stuff. Nevertheless, this second rejected paper did afford me an opportunity to express my earlier thoughts about ghost arrays. Those thoughts became more succinct after Brian Wybourne pointed out that what I was doing to determine the ghosts was, in fact, the group theoretic technique known as S-function division. I seem to recall that Brian did this while visiting the University of Florida following participation in a Coral Gables conference. More time passed. I worked on sigma models, among other things. Then strings came back into vogue. 11 In 1985 I noticed a paper by Barton Zwiebach, who pointed out the curvature squared terms that arose in the effective local field theory produced by strings were topological (“Lovelock Lagrangian”in 4D spacetime) and gave no propagating modes. That rang a bell. I seemed to me this was just a consequence of gauge invariance for the T[ab]c field. This motivated me to look back at the referee’sreport and editorial comments on my solo paper. Remarkably, the editor had actually left the ball in my court by offering to me an opportunity to refute the referee’srejection. So I did. Adding a comment about and a citation of Zwiebach’spaper. 12 The (new) Editor then accepted the paper immediately! Perhaps the final outcome was also due, in part, to a change of editors (Kabir Georgi) during 1980-1985. ! 13 So, it took almost six years from the date it was received at Physics Letters B (coinci- dentally, Einstein’s 101st birthday, as well as my youngest daughter’s day of birth) to the date it finally appeared in that journal. That length of time must be a record for a letters journal. The paper was cited by no one but me during that submission = publication time period. ) 14 After it appeared in the journal, the paper was cited by others a few more times, but then faded away “exponentially”in a way typical of most papers. 15 Only to re-surface later, when it finally became of interest. The current interest in the paper is as a model of “dual gravity” especially in higher dimensions. For some recent discussions of all this, see here. 16 As I mentioned already, my other 1982 solo paper on exotic gauge fields was rejected and did not get published. Until last month ... some 36 years later! OK, there are other things to do, so I’ll stop. Thank you for your time and attention. But considering the various time-delays in publishing a couple of these papers, perhaps there is a take-away Moral: Have respect for the comments of the referee, and the opinion of the editor, but of course, ultimately they may change their minds. Usually their comments are professional and well-meaning. But occasionally they may seem a bit personal. In those situations, it is all the more important to put things in perspective. Or as expressed in the cinema in a similar situation ... 17.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Existentialism of Martin Buber and Implications for Education
    This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 69-4919 KINER, Edward David, 1939- THE EXISTENTIALISM OF MARTIN BUBER AND IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1968 Education, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE EXISTENTIALISM OF MARTIN BUBER AND IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Edward David Kiner, B.A., M.A. ####*### The Ohio State University 1968 Approved by Adviser College of Education This thesis is dedicated to significant others, to warm, vital, concerned people Who have meant much to me and have helped me achieve my self, To people whose lives and beings have manifested "glimpses" of the Eternal Thou, To my wife, Sharyn, and my children, Seth and Debra. VITA February 14* 1939 Born - Cleveland, Ohio 1961......... B.A. Western Reserve University April, 1965..... M.A. Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion June, 1965...... Ordained a Rabbi 1965-1968........ Assistant Rabbi, Temple Israel, Columbus, Ohio 1967-1968...... Director of Religious Education, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Philosophy of Education Studies in Philosophy of Education, Dr. Everett J. Kircher Studies in Curriculum, Dr. Alexander Frazier Studies in Philosophy, Dr. Marvin Fox ill TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION............................................. ii VITA ................................................... iii INTRODUCTION............................ 1 Chapter I. AN INTRODUCTION TO MARTIN BUBER'S THOUGHT....... 6 Philosophical Anthropology I And Thou Martin Buber and Hasidism Buber and Existentialism Conclusion II. EPISTEMOLOGY . 30 Truth Past and Present I-It Knowledge Thinking Philosophy I-Thou Knowledge Complemented by I-It Living Truth Buber as an Ebdstentialist-Intuitionist Implications for Education A Major Problem Education, Inclusion, and the Problem of Criterion Conclusion III.
    [Show full text]
  • Mass Gaps and Braneworlds∗
    Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 53 (2020) 204002 (13pp) https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8121/ab83ca Mass gaps and braneworlds∗ K S Stelle The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London Prince Consort Road London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom E-mail: [email protected] Received 13 February 2020, revised 24 March 2020 Accepted for publication 26 March 2020 Published 29 April 2020 Abstract Remembering the foundational contributions of Peter Freund to supergravity, and especially to the problems of dimensional compactication, reduction is considered with a non-compact space transverse to the lower dimensional the- ory. The known problem of a continuum of Kaluza–Klein states is avoided here by the occurrence of a mass gap between a single normalizable zero- eigenvalue transverse wavefunction and the edge of the transverse state con- tinuum. This style of reduction does not yield a formally consistent truncation to the lower dimensional theory, so developing the lower-dimensional effective theory requires integrating out the Kaluza–Klein states lying above the mass gap. Keywords: mass gap, effective theory, dimensional reduction, supergravity (Some gures may appear in colour only in the online journal) 1. Memories of Peter Freund It is with great fondness that I think back to all the various interactions that I had with Peter Freund throughout my career. Of course, there are the many shared interests in physics, espe- cially in supersymmetry, nonabelian gauge theories of all sorts, dimensional reduction and string theory. But there are also the episodes, and especially the story telling about episodes, at which Peter was a world master.
    [Show full text]
  • Mass Gaps and Braneworlds--In Memory of Peter Freund
    Mass gaps and braneworlds In Memory of Peter Freund K.S. Stelle1 The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ Abstract Remembering the foundational contributions of Peter Freund to supergravity, and es- pecially to the problems of dimensional compactification, reduction is considered with a non-compact space transverse to the lower dimensional theory. The known problem of a continuum of Kaluza-Klein states is avoided here by the occurrence of a mass gap between a single normalizable zero-eigenvalue transverse wavefunction and the edge of the transverse state continuum. This style of reduction does not yield a formally consistent truncation to the lower dimensional theory, so developing the lower-dimensional effective theory requires integrating out the Kaluza-Klein states lying above the mass gap. Memories of Peter Freund It is with great fondness that I think back to all the various interactions that I had with Peter Freund throughout my career. Of course, there are the many shared interests in physics, especially in supersymmetry, nonabelian gauge theories of all sorts, dimensional reduction and string theory. But there are also the episodes, and especially the story telling about episodes, at which Peter was a world master. One could not say that Peter was generally softly spoken. One of my earliest memories of Peter was at an Institute for Theoretical Physics workshop at the University of California at Santa Barbara back in 1986. Peter was giving a seminar, and, as usual, electronic amplification was hardly needed for him. However, one of our senior colleagues (who shall remain nameless) was sitting in arXiv:2004.00965v1 [hep-th] 2 Apr 2020 the front row and was actually managing to sleep during Peter's seminar.
    [Show full text]
  • Arxiv:2008.11225V2 [Hep-Th] 8 Dec 2020 Many Contributions to This Special Issue Are Devoted to Gravity, String Theory Or Higher Dimensions [9–24]
    A Passion for Theoretical Physics: a special issue in memory of Peter G O Freund Jeffrey A Harvey,∗ Emil J Martinec∗ and Rafael I Nepomechie† December 9, 2020 Abstract This is a preface to A Passion for Theoretical Physics, a special issue collection of articles published in J. Phys. A in memory of Peter G O Freund. We dedicate this special issue to the memory of our esteemed colleague, inspiring teacher and cherished friend, Peter Freund (figure 1). Peter George Oliver Freund was born on 7 September 1936 in Timi¸soara,Romania. He ob- tained his PhD under the supervision of Walter Thirring at the University of Vienna in 1960. He came to the University of Chicago in 1963, where he re- mained throughout his career. He passed away on 6 March 2018. Peter's early influential work [1] proposed what became known as the Freund- Harari conjecture, whose far-reaching impact is discussed in the contribution to this special issue by Veneziano [2], see also the review by Peter himself [3]. Dual resonance models (which were ultimately understood to be string theories) ap- peared soon afterwards, and Peter was among the few theorists at that time who took seriously the extra dimensions required for their consistency. Indeed, extra dimensions figured prominently in much of Peter's subsequent work, including the Cho-Freund paper [4] that helped launch a renaissance in Kaluza-Klein the- ories, the Freund-Rubin solution [5] that has played an important role in the AdS/CFT correspondence, his Kaluza-Klein cosmological solutions [6], and his work [7] that presaged the heterotic string.
    [Show full text]
  • M5-Brane Amplitudes Is Through Spinor-Helicity Coordinates Λia [13]
    CALT-TH-2020-001 M5-Brane Amplitudes John H. Schwarz1 Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics California Institute of Technology 452-48 Pasadena, CA 91125, USA Abstract The dynamics of a probe M5-brane, embedded as a hypersurface in eleven- dimensional Minkowski spacetime, is described by a six-dimensional world-volume theory. This theory has a variety of interesting symmetries some of which are obscure in the Lagrangian formulation of the theory. However, as summarized in this review, an alternative approach is to construct all of its on-shell tree-level scattering amplitudes. This enables understanding all of the symmetries in a satisfying way. This work is dedicated to the memory of Peter Freund. arXiv:2001.03793v2 [hep-th] 23 Jan 2020 [email protected] 1 Introduction I am pleased to have an opportunity to contribute to this volume in memory of a great physicist, my good friend Peter Freund. We never collaborated, but I often enjoyed dis- cussing physics with Peter, and I admired his research. Reading his 2007 autobiographical reminiscences, aptly entitled A Passion for Discovery, I learned about Peter’s courage as a student activist in Romania, where in 1956 he faced a row of tanks that were aimed at him and his friends. It was fortunate for him, and the future of physics, that the tanks did not fire and that he was able to make his way to the United States. As it happens, my father was born in a nearby town in Romania that belonged to Hungary when he was there. The border was moved after the first world war.
    [Show full text]
  • Report for the Academic Years 1987-88 and 1988-89
    Institute /or ADVANCED STUDY REPORT FOR THE ACADEMIC YEARS 1987-88 AND 1988-89 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY nijiUfi.CAL ?""l::r"- £90"^ jr^^VTE LIBriARlf THE !f^;STiTUTE FQll AC -.MiEO STUDY PR1NCE70M, FmEW JEfiGcV 08540 AS3G TABLE OF CONTENTS 7 FOUNDERS, TRUSTEES AND OFFICERS OF THE BOARD AND OF THE CORPORATION 10 • OFFICERS OF THE ADMINISTRATION AND PROFESSOR AT LARGE 1 1 REPORT OF THE CHAIRMAN 14 REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 19 • FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AND INDEPENDENT AUDITORS' REPORT 32 REPORT OF THE SCHOOL OF HISTORICAL STUDIES ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE FACULTY MEMBERS, VISITORS AND RESEARCH STAFF 41 • REPORT OF THE SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE SCHOOL MEMBERS, VISITORS AND RESEARCH STAFF 51 REPORT OF THE SCHOOL OF NATURAL SCIENCES ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE FACULTY MEMBERS, VISITORS AND RESEARCH STAFF 58 • REPORT OF THE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES OF THE SCHOOL AND ITS FACULTY MEMBERS, VISITORS AND RESEARCH STAFF 64 • REPORT OF THE INSTITUTE LIBRARIES 66 • RECORD OF INSTITUTE EVENTS IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 1987 - 1988 86 • RECORD OF INSTITUTE EVENTS IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 1988 - 1989 f:i'S^o FOUNDERS, TRUSTEES AND OFFICERS OF THE BOARD AND OF THE CORPORATION Foiifidcrs CAROLINE BAMBERGER FULD LOUIS BAMBERGER The Board of Trustees [1987-1989] MARELLA AGNELLI Turin, Italy [1988- ] THORNTON F. BRADSHAW New York, New York [deceased December 6, 1988] CHARLES L. BROWN Princeton, New Jersey FLETCHER L. BYROM Carefree, Arizona GLADYS K. DELMAS New York, New York [ -1988] MICHAEL V. FORRESTAL New York, New York [deceased January 11,1 989] MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER Director Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NewJersey VARTAN GREGORIAN President New York Public Library, New York, New York WILFRIED GUTH Chairman of the Supervisory Board Deutsche Bank AG, Frankfurt, Federal Republic of Germany RALPH E.
    [Show full text]
  • The University of Chicago a Study of the Evaporative
    THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO A STUDY OF THE EVAPORATIVE DEPOSITION PROCESS: PIPES AND TRUNCATED TRANSPORT DYNAMICS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS BY RUI ZHENG CHICAGO, ILLINOIS SEPTEMBER 2007 Copyright °c 2007 by Rui Zheng All rights reserved To people from whom I have learned and bene¯ted; To the University of Chicago where I rediscovered myself. ABSTRACT We consider contact line deposition and pattern formation of a pinned evaporating thin drop. We identify and focus on the transport dynamics truncated by the maximal concentration, proposed by Dupont [1], as the single deposition mechanism. The trun- cated process, formalized as \pipe models", admits a characteristic moving shock front solution that has a robust functional form and depends only on local conditions. By applying the models, we solve the deposition process and describe the deposit density pro¯le in di®erent asymptotic regimes. In particular, near the contact line the density pro¯le follows a scaling law that is proportional to the square root of the concentration ratio, and the maximal deposit density/thickness occurs at about 2=3 of the total dry- ing time for uniform evaporation and 1=2 for di®usion-controlled evaporation. Away from the contact line, we for the ¯rst time identify the power-law decay of the deposit pro¯le with respect to the radial distance. In comparison, our work is consistent with and extends previous results [7]. We also predict features of the depinning process and multiple-ring patterns within Dupont model, and our predictions are consistent with empirical evidence.
    [Show full text]
  • Peter George Oliver Freund
    PETER GEORGE OLIVER FREUND (9 septembrie 1936, Timişoara – 6 martie 2018, Chicago) Fizician, profesor emeritus în fizică teoretică la Universitatea din Chicago. Eseist şi scriitor. S-a născut în Timişoara, într-o familie înstărită, cu strămoşi de la inceputul secolului al XIX-lea, înmormântați în cimitirul evreilor. Tatăl, Joseph, era medic, iar mama, Rozsi, a cărei familie era proprietara unui magazin mare de textile, era cântăreață de operă. Familia locuia în centrul oraşului, în palatul Färber, între Palatul Llyod şi Palatul Merbl. Joseph Freund era proprietarul şi directorul unui Sanatoriu, cunoscut sub numele Sanatoriul Freund, unde în timpul anilor războiului evreii din oraş erau îngrijiți. Una din măsurile anti-evreieşti interzicea evreilor sa fie tratați de medici ne-evrei, iar medicii evrei nu aveau permisiunea sa trateze bolnavi ne-evrei. Clădirea spitalului a fost CNR-izată, adică expropriată. Numeroşi membri ai familiei au fost asasinați la Auschwitz, iar un unchi, Pavel a fost deportat în Transnistria, la Vapnyarka. Un alt unchi, Emeric (Imre) Freund, era jucător de polo la cluul I.L.S.A. şi a devenit antrenor de înot al echipei naţionale a României. După studii la Universitatea Politehnica Timişoara, Peter Freund a emigrat în 1959 din Romania şi s-a stabilit timp de câțiva ani la Viena, unde a obținut în anul 1960 doctoratul în fizică teoretică la fizicianul de renume Walter Thirring la Universitatea din Viena. Din 1965 este la Universitatea din Chicago. În prezent este Professor Emeritus, Departamentul de Fizică, Institutul Enrico Fermi, Universitate. Locuieşte la Chicago împreună cu soția, Lucy, psiholoagă. Au două fiice (Pauline, avocată şi Caroline, economistă) şi 5 nepoți.
    [Show full text]
  • Particle Theory at Chicago in the Late Sixties
    January 2020 Particle Theory at Chicago in the Late Sixties Paul H. Frampton Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica "Ennio De Giorgi", Universit`adel Salento and INFN-Lecce, Via Arnesano, 73100 Lecce, Italy∗ Abstract As a contribution requested by the editors of a Memorial Volume for Peter G.O. Freund (1936-2018) we recall the lively particle theory group at the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago in the late sixties, of which Peter was a mem- orable member. We also discuss a period some twenty years later when our and Peter's research overlapped on the topic of p-adic strings. In memory of Peter G.O. Freund Submitted to a special issue of Journal of Physics A entitled A passion for theoretical physics: in memory of Peter G.O. Freund. Edited by J. Harvey, E. Martinec and R. Nepomechie. ∗[email protected] 1 Introduction It is a pleasure and an honour to write in memory of Professor Peter G.O. Freund (1936-2018) who spent most of his career, from 1965 to 2018, at the University of Chicago. As can be read elsewhere in this book he had been born and initially educated in Romania then acquired his PhD at the University of Vienna which explains his European sophistication. He had a passion for theoretical physics and inspired many young people, including myself, in their quest to extend human knowledge. 2 Enrico Fermi Institute At the beginning of September 1968, I arrived at the University of Chicago group in the Enrico Fermi Institute for a two-year postdoctoral position having just finished a D.Phil in Oxford.
    [Show full text]
  • May 2012 • Vol
    May 2012 • Vol. 21, No. 5 Fang Lizhi Remembered A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY see page 6 WWW.APS.ORG/PUBLICATIONS/APSNEWS/INDEX April Meeting Prize and Award Recipients APS Unveils Five-year Strategic Plan After a year of work by its and rolled out to the leaders of outlines goals to make the phys- leadership, the APS strategic plan APS units at the unit convocation ics community thrive. First and for 2013 through 2017 has been in April. “The overall goals are foremost, the Society aims to completed and is being circulated to better serve the members, the keep its journals and meetings to the membership. The plan sets physics community and society,” as prime sources of cutting-edge forth a series of goals for the So- Kirby said. physics research. In addition, the ciety over the next half-decade. Finding ways to better serve Society will continue to advocate “The value of a strategic plan the members includes improv- for physics to policy makers, and is that it articulates a common vi- ing communication between the continue to promote physics edu- sion for the Society,” said APS Society and its members, involv- cation at all levels. Executive Officer Kate Kirby. ing more international members In order to serve society as a “The process itself involves step- in the Society’s leadership, and whole, APS aims to be the lead- ping back, looking at what we are making the membership itself ing source of information about doing, and identifying possible more diverse and inclusive. physics, and to build support for challenges and new opportunities “It’s important that the physics science amongst the public.
    [Show full text]
  • A Life in Mathematical Science Part I: Growing-Up, Student and Postdoc Years
    A Life in Mathematical Science Part I: Growing-Up, Student and Postdoc Years Nicholas Stephen Manton FRS ∗ Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WA, England. March 2017 { September 2018 Abstract This memoir has been prepared in response to the Royal Society's request for Fellows to write an autobiography. There is more here of a personal nature than the Royal Society needs, but also a review of my scientific work and recollections about some of the scientists I have met and worked with. ∗email: [email protected] 1 1 Introduction It is interesting to look back on one's life and career, recall some key memories, and try to assess the significance of one's contribution to science. My life has not been very eventful from the public's perspective. I'm little known outside a modest circle of theoretical physicists and some mathematicians, and have not appeared as a scientist on TV. I have hardly ever been interviewed by journalists, except once for Finnish radio when Stephen Hawking was unavailable. But I have had an interesting time in science, and most of my social life revolves around interactions with academic colleagues and graduate students. For over 30 years, family life has been with my wife Anneli Aitta and our son Ben. I am currently 65 and expect to retire in about two years. I would hope to be involved with research beyond retirement, and to keep writing articles and maybe another book. But I have had some health problems recently, so felt that it was a good time to start on this memoir.
    [Show full text]
  • Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theories: Not Quite the Usual Perspective
    Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theories: not quite the usual perspective Sudarshan Ananth :, Hermann Nicolai ‹, Chetan Pandey : and Saurabh Pant : :Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune 411008, India ˚Max-Planck-Institut f¨ur Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut) Am M¨uhlenberg 1, 14476 Potsdam, Germany Abstract In this paper, we take up an old thread of development concerning the characterization of supersymmetric theories without any use of anticommuting variables that goes back to one of the authors’ very early work [1]. Our special focus here will be on the formulation of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories, extending previous results beyond D “ 4 dimensions. This perspective is likely to provide new insights into these theories, and in particular the maximally extended N “ 4 theory. As a new result we re-derive the admissible dimensions for interacting (pure) super-Yang-Mills theories to exist. This article is dedicated to the memory of Peter Freund, amongst many other things an early contributor to supersymmetry, and an author of one of the very first papers on superconformal gauge theories [2]. The final section contains some personal reminiscences of H.N.’s encounters arXiv:2001.02768v2 [hep-th] 12 Mar 2020 with Peter Freund. 1 Introduction and Conventions There is a large literature on supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories (see e.g. [3]), particularly concerning the maximally extended N “ 4 theory in four dimensions, or equivalently, pure super-Yang-Mills theory in D “ 10 [4]. This theory has been proposed to underlie M theory, either via the AdS/CFT correspondence [5], or, in its dimensionally reduced form, the maxi- mally supersymmetric SU(8) matrix model [6, 7].
    [Show full text]