Von: Lampe Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Donnerstag, 28. Januar 1999 15:12 An: 't41@nikhef.nl'
Dear Joseph, please confirm that you received my message, because I am sending it from my new working place. Bodo PS: I hope to meet you personally again at some point, so lets keep in contact
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Dienstag, 16. März 1999 03:04 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: AW: AW: Paper
Dear Bodo,
Thanks for the reply and sorry for my delayed response.
My German should be OK after some practise. In Dortmund I was giving classes in German, since then I have forgotten quite a bit. But I am sure it will come back with some practise. Maybe I should try to get a job with a company which also has offices in USA. That way I can do a local interview.
What did you think of the Monte Carlo Paper I sent you ? I am working on a follow-up paper of that one.
Best Regards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Montag, 7. Juni 1999 14:33 An: 't41@nikhef.nl'
Dear Joseph, how are you now? I am fine, although I am feeling somewhat unhappy not to do physics anymore, it is slowly disappearing from my mind. Since I am doing literature now I am reading books on (German) literature history trying to find interesting sujets. Anyway, one interesting topic is a guy like me struggling against a bunch of carreerists ...
What ist the state of neutrino masses and oscillations? Is there anything unclear from your point of view? Best wishes Bodo PS:Please send your email to the above address because I only rarely look into the MPI mailbox.
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Freitag, 11. Juni 1999 16:30 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Reprints
Dear Bodo,
The reprints have arrived. Thanks very much.
I got a message from you a few days ago concerning neutrinos. I have not been following that up very much. There is a lot of interest in the effects of low scale gravity. Recently, BaBar has started up as well, so there should be a lot of activity in B Physics soon.
Best REgards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Freitag, 11. Juni 1999 16:53 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: AW: Reprints
Dear Joseph, your mail has arrived. Thanks for the information. What is low scale gravity? Is it related to the 5th force considered some years ago? Best wishes Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Sonntag, 18. Juli 1999 21:34 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: AW: Reprints
Dear Bodo,
Sorry for the delay in replying to you.
>your mail has arrived. Thanks for the information. What is low scale >gravity? >Is it related to the 5th force considered some years ago?
I do not understand the thing fully myself, however it seems that in some schemes, it is possible to have extra compact dimensions with relatively large radii of curvature. In such a scenario, you can get phenomeenological effects already at the TeV scale, such as missing enery spectra etc.
I have done no work on this subject, but it is quite popular.
Best REgards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Montag, 19. Juli 1999 16:41 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: AW: AW: Reprints
Dear Joseph, thanks for your message. Unfortunately, I have nothing to say about physics. The weather is hot and humid in Munich, and one day is like the other. But as Hemingway says: one can be destroyed. But one should not give up I'll write you something longer soon. Best wishes Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Dienstag, 26. Oktober 1999 19:45 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: General
Dear Bodo,
>that time. Now imagine, we would live in a world, where the curvature >effects of gravitation are stronger, and Gauss would have measured >this. >What would have been the consequences he would have drawn? And >furthermore >(a question which I have to you) under what circumstances could that >be? >Would it be enough that the speed of light c is much smaller than it is >in >reality? Or would one have to have a much stronger Newton constant G_N >or >what.
I imagine is this case that there would be a lot of difficulty in even discovering the inverse square law. If you adjust the fundamental parameters so that the curvature of light in the earths gravitational field is noticeable even with the technology of the last century, then the Keplers Laws would not be assumed to be exact and the discovery of the inverse square Law be Newton and Hooke would have been delayed.
It seems to me that there is not too much going on in particle physics. I heard a very interesting talk recently proposing a modification of the Boltzmann distribution for strongly interacting thermodynamic systems. One consequence for particle physics concerns a result by Hagedorn that multi-particle events may be described in thermodynamic language. This description does not work for jets, but if the Boltzmann weight is modified to take into account the long range nature of non-perturbative QCD, then there is good agreement at Lep energies. There is a paper in this in hep-ph by Miranda, if you are interested.
Do you know Robin Stuart ? I heard he has left particle physics and now works elsewhere. Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Dienstag, 2. November 1999 11:11 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: AW: General
Dear Joseph,thanks for your mail last wee.
About my Gauss story: within the ordinary world I calculated the curvature of light in the earth Gravitational field to be an effect of order 10 to the minus 11. Of course this is tiny as compared To the technical possibilities of the last (and also of our) century. Nevertheless I will write the story In such a way that I ficticiously assume that Gauss was able to build an apparatus, by means Of which he was able to detect this effect, and I will develop, what conclusions he would have Drawn.In general, in my story I am more interested in his social environment, so I dont want to Make it too speculative.
Of course, this is less interesting than if the speed of light would be different from what it is In our universe. My question to you was not how the history of science would have been modified, but just, whether a smaller value of c would be enough to make the curvature of light in the earht gravitational field a larger effect than 10 to the minus 11.
Do you think the effects you mentioned, Kepler etc would be the most dominant, or would there Be even more drastic effects? What would happen, if c is decreased by a factor of 1000 and at the same time h is increased by a factor Of 1000, so that c times h remains constant? If you have time, please think about these points. Best wishes Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Samstag, 13. November 1999 04:00 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: AW: General
Dear Bodo,
>Iabout Robin Stuart: I knew that Kane was trying to push him out of his >tenure track. This is >Really nasty,because Robin was doing reasonable work all the time. The real >reason was probably >That Robin sometimes is not as polite (not to say slick) as others.
Actually, Robin was the one who explained how to add a finite width to a propagator in a way respecting Su(2)*U(1) gauge invariance. It is a pity he was forced to leave physics. I know he did not like Kane and may have had difficulties with others as well.
>Of course, this is less interesting than if the speed of light would be >different from what it is >In our universe. My question to you was not how the history of science would >have been modified, >but just, whether a smaller value of c would be enough to make the curvature >of light in the earht >gravitational field a larger effect than 10 to the minus 11. > >Do you think the effects you mentioned, Kepler etc would be the most >dominant, or would there >Be even more drastic effects? >What would happen, if c is decreased by a factor of 1000 and at the same >time h is increased by a factor >Of 1000, so that c times h remains constant? >If you have time, please think about these points.
Actually, George Gamow wrote a popular book about these things a long time ago. It may have been translated into German. You might want to read it.
I will be starting some work with the people here on exotic SUSY inspired top decays. Not all that interesting, but there is not much interesting to do these days.
Best REgards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Mittwoch, 15. Dezember 1999 14:48 An: 't41@nikhef.nl'
Hallo Joseph, how are you? How are things going? In my pastime I want to work about spontaneous symmetry breaking in the SM and GUTs. Do you know of some recent interesting work? Best wishes Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Montag, 20. Dezember 1999 18:39 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: SSB
Dear Bodo,
>In my pastime I want to work about spontaneous symmetry breaking in the SM >and GUTs. >Do you know of some recent interesting work?
Unfortunately, no. I do not really follow the GUT literature.
I was talking to one of the experimenters here, it will take perhaps untill 2007 before we really get any useful numbers from the LHC. This is a long time, and I do not think there will be any high energy colliders before that.
If LEP does not discover anything new, there will be very few clues for the way ahead, unless BaBar finds something unexpected. There will be a new high luminosity run at the Tevatron beginning in March next year, but I am not sure what exactly it will acchieve apart from a better bound on the top mass and improve the mass limits on some SUSY particles.
The only real scope for anything new is in the neutrino sector, so maybe I will focus more attention there.
Have a good holiday !
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Donnerstag, 13. Januar 2000 15:02 An: 't41@nikhef.nl'
Dear Joseph, how are you? Sorry to answer so late. I was on holiday and afterwards caught a flu.
The main point about SSB is that You have to add longitudinal components to the W's In order to get them massive. If you do this addition in a SU2 symmetric way you automatically Get the Higgsboson and renormalizability!
The question is whether one can do reasonable theoretical things beyond that without having New experimental results from LHC shining on SSB. What happened to composite models of W's and Z. Is there a standard composite model of this type by now? I think a reasonable Composite model of this type should include the Higgs to be composite.
About neutrinos: its difficult to get a new idea just from the present experiments. Maybe one could do Fermion Mass matrices. By the way, what are the present experimental numbers?
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Sonntag, 16. Januar 2000 21:06 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Your message
Dear Bodo,
Good to hear from you.
>The question is whether one can do reasonable theoretical things beyond that >without having >New experimental results from LHC shining on SSB. What happened to composite >models of >W's and Z. Is there a 'standard' composite model of this type by now? I >think a reasonable >Composite model of this type should include the Higgs to be composite.
As far as I recall, most compostite models had the problem of large FCNC. Also, it is not obvious how to get massive fermions from massless constituents without fundamental scalars. Most simple technicolour type models are ruled out by now, only some variants of the Bardeen Hill Lindner idea might still be OK. I am not a great fan of this idea, it merely pushes the problem of SSB elsewhere. Also, with many of these composite models, it is hard to do any first principle calculations because the dynamics is so non-peturbative.
Regards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Montag, 24. Januar 2000 12:26 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: AW: Your message
Dear Joseph, thank you for your mail.
About composite Higgs and Vectorbosons: I am not sure whether it is a good argument to say ", it merely pushes the problem of SSB elsewhere", I think the main question is whether the model is physically true, and I also can hardly imagine that it is. In any case I scanned the literature and there seem to be lots of analyses and calculations of the Higgs and vector boson mass in those models, and I dont know what one could do.
Maybe one should try to develop better method for bound state calculations, because the existing methods all make some sort of approximation (like considering fermions only to oneloop, or large N, or else), and its difficult to judge, how good these approximations really are.
Maybe the topquark is also composite, but then one needs additional scalar preons, which is not very appealing either.
In any case, although I have no good idea at the moment, the SSB problem seems to me interesting enough that I will continue reflecting it. Best wishes Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Freitag, 17. März 2000 21:07 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: AW: Your message
Dear Bodo,
Sorry for the late reply to your message. This has been a busy semester for me.
Do you think you will return to physics ? Sometimes I am not so sure how exciting High Energy Physics is these days, there has been a lot of work done on mm scale quantum gravity, many people have got tenured appointments based on their work in this area and related aspects in string theory. But this may be just another fashion which may well disappear after a while. In any case, the real test is experiment and progress there is slow. Run II of the Tevatron has been delayed and even if there are new results from baBar on CP Violation it will be some time before they appear. Last I heard, LHC will start in 2008 which is a long way from now. I have no idea about the plans for a future high energy Linac, but I do not think it will be anytime soon. Do you know if such a machine will be constructed in DESY ?
Perhaps the next big breakthrough will come from a non-accelerator experiment. Meanwhile, I should also think of doing things other than high energy physics.
Best REgards,
Joseph
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Sonntag, 26. März 2000 05:34 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: A few lines
Dear Bodo,
Thanks for your reply.
A point which I forgot to mention concerning HEP; the huge time scales involved in future colliders is now a serious problems for experimenters as well. One of the older professors who works on D0 told me that it is not reasonable to expect young scientists to start working on a future LHC detector when it means waiting for eight years before the first measurements can be taken. As you may recall, the LHC became an official CERN project in 1990. It will begin in 2008, eighteen years is a large fraction of the career of a physicist. And for future linac detectors, if it is 10 years before such a collider will be built, then I can imagine many more senior experimenters will not be very enthusiastic since they will retire before the machine is on line.
In a field like this, it is hard to say what research is relevant. If we imagine that a theorist applies now for a faculty position based on a number of papers on the phenomonology of future high energy e+e- linacs it is not obvious that anyone should (or should not) obtain a professorship based on these works since all applications lie so far into the future. Can such work be really relevant ? It is hard to say especially when we remember that many important people wrote many papers on SSC phenomonology which lost a lot of importance once the SSC was cancelled.
This is why I am sometimes pessimistic about the immediate future of high energy physics. There are some current problems in neutrino physics and non perturbative Quantum Field Theory which have a definite short term importance, but that is all. Of course, things could change if Lep-2 find some completely unexpected particle or a light Higgs, but if that does not happen it is hard to say which direction is the correct one, and it will be many years before there will be a clue from experiment.
Regards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Donnerstag, 11. Mai 2000 15:16 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: AW: AW: General
Dear Joseph, didn't hear from you recently. How are you?
In Bavaria its very warm now, as usually in May (and it summer it will be raining).
The Rueckl position at the LMU has been newly opened. I dont think it makes sense for me to apply, because probably they are angry on me. So I just skip anything related to HEP position. and only From time to time I read new preprints from the LosAlamos preprint server. I saw that you didnt write a paper recently. Anyhow there is not much progress in HEP, with or without us.
In Germany the government is seeking for 20000 IT experts from outside the country, probably the situation is similar in the US. Will you come to Germany at some point?
best wishes Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Donnerstag, 11. Mai 2000 19:38 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: AW: AW: General
Dear Bodo,
Sorry for the lonfg delay in replying. I had a very busy semester and am now trying to catch up on many things, including research.
>anything related to HEP position. and only From time to time I read new >preprints from the LosAlamos preprint server. I saw that you didnt write a >paper recently. Anyhow there is not much progress in HEP, with or without >us.
I was recently at the APS divisional meeting on Hihg Energy and Nuclear Physics, there is not a lot by way of exciting developments. Many people are working on large extra dimensions, I do not like the idea at all because it adds many complications while trying to solve the hierarchy problem. There was a recent paper by Akhoury and Van der Bij pointing out problems with the whole scheme.
I even went to a few string theory talks, I understood less than nothing and I am not sure why this kind of activity should be counted as physics.
As regards the future, there is a funding problem in the US. 5 billion dollars is needed for the next accelerator (linac) and it is not clear that the money will be available. Even if it is approved most probably it will not come online for another 12-15 years. This is a long time to wait, I certainly do not plan to spend the next 12 years calculating corss-sections for a future linac. Also, there is the additional problem of how to keep both SLAC and Fermilab alive. The new linac can be built at only one site, probably Fermilab since there is not enough room for expansion at SLAC. There is also talk of a muon collider, but that is too far away to think about. There is another interesting possibility, design a muon ring at Fermilab which will be used as a source for neutrinos. The detector wil be at Slac or possibly even in China, for the puprose of detecting really long baseline oscillations. This is much cheaper, but will not probe higher energies.
What is the situation in Europe ? How much longer will HERA run ? I know this is the last year of Lep-2, but I guess papers will appear for the next few years on the results.
I imagine DESY will want to build a linac, but with many experimenters busy with LHC for the next several years, I suppose it will take sometime.
I am not very optimistic about the future of HEP, unless there is some huge break through in accelerator technology which will bring down the cost of accelerators a lot.
>Will you come to Germany at some point?
Not in the near future.
best REgards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Dienstag, 30. Mai 2000 11:08 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: AW: AW: AW: General
Dear Joseph, how are you. You ask: What is the situation in Europe ? How much longer will HERA run ? I know this is the last year of Lep-2, but I guess papers will appear for the next few years on the results. I am hardly informed about the situation of HEP in Europe, but its true even if the funding situation improves (due to the general economy), they will concentrate on LHC---which is reasonable. They might find new heavy particles, although difficult to detect, in particular since they do not know for what to search (apart from the Higgs). This is therefore a thing I would be interested in, eg new heavy vector bosons (is there anything to be done in this respect?). About strings and higher dimensions I agree with what you say. It might be interesting as a sort of mathematics but should not be counted as physics, because there is no experimental hint at all.The same in my opinion with respect so SUSY (although the enthusiasts claim that SUSY has been proven) - as long as they do not find any SUSY-partners I am sceptical. Of course these things may happen at very high energy, but then it is difficult to prove experimentally, and not a good symmetry and not so interesting anyway.
Next month we will move to another house, and therefore I am doing lots of stuff like packing and drawing walls. I will send you my new private address later on. I wish we could meet more often. best wishes Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Montag, 12. Juni 2000 15:51 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: AW: AW: AW: General
Dear Bodo,
Good to hear from you.
>on LHC---which is reasonable. They might find new heavy particles, although >difficult to detect, in particular since they do not know for what to search
>(apart from the Higgs). This is therefore a thing I would be interested in, >eg new heavy vector bosons (is there anything to be done in this respect?).
I think that all the more obvious things to be done with new gauge bosons have been done some years ago.
>About strings and higher dimensions I agree >with what you say. It might be interesting as a sort of mathematics but >should not be counted as physics, because there is no experimental >hint at all.The same in my opinion with respect so SUSY (although
The difficulty with strings is that the low energy end of the theory which is what we can study experimentally is non-perturbative. That is why there are no firm theoretical first principles predictions for anything. The situation would be like studying hadron physics with no experimental data and no assistance from lattice QCD, except that strings are much more complicated than QCD. Many people forget that Einstein not only postulated General Relativity, he also suggested an experimental test. It has now been 15 years since the Green and Schwarz paper and the connection with experiment is still very tenuous. Maybe this is not surprising when we consider how little is known about exact solutions of General Relativity after 60 years of work.
>the enthusiasts claim that SUSY has been proven) - as long as they >do not find any SUSY-partners I am sceptical. Of course these things >may happen at very high energy, but then it is difficult to prove >experimentally,
With SUSY the situation is a little better since most versions of the theory can be verified or ruled out by experiment. Strings can neither be excluded or verified by experiment, which is one level worse. But you are right, final proof can come only from experiment.
I am now learning C and want to start later with C++ and Perl. Sometime ago you mentioned that there could be many jobs available in Germany for programmers in these languages. Is that still the case ?
Best Regards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Dienstag, 13. Juni 2000 13:37 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: AW: AW: AW: AW: General
Dear Joseph, about physics I will answer later.
about jobs: there has been lots of discussion in Germany and finally in spring they have decided that 10000 computer experts should be hired from outside (without much bureaucracy!). As far as I know about 6000 or 7000 people so far have asked or inquired. This is known as "green card initiative" of the German Arbeitsamt and should be available in the internet. The Arbeitsamt will distribute the applicants to the software firms you dont need a degree in informatics, physics is ok, but you must claim to have experience with computers. If you are asked to fill out a form, I would claim to know C, UNIX etc, because for us these programming languages can be learnt in 4 weeks (if we work hard). You will be hired for 3 or 5 years first, but everybody is discussing that due to the missing young people in Germany the computer experts will probably stay forever. best wishes Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Freitag, 11. August 2000 23:32 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Your Messages
Dear Bodo,
Thanks for you messages. I have just finished teaching and will be away for a few days on holiday. There is an APS meeting which will address the future of High Energy in the US, I will ask the people who went what happened.
I am not terribly optimistic about the field, I do not think the rate of new experimental discoveries will be enough to keep the theory really lively and interesting.
Some of the older and more senior people have told me that if they were young today they would choose another field. Maybe I will go ahead and move into a new area.
I spent part of the summer teaching myself C when I had time off from teaching, next I will attack C++ and perhaps Perl. I am not 100% sure about whether I want to move to Germany, also I think that a company will want to interview me and that will be easier for an American Company. But I will make additional enquiries with some friends who run a software business before deciding.
Best Regards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Montag, 14. August 2000 12:55 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Cc: 'bol@mppmu.mpg.de' Betreff: AW: Your Messages
Dear Joseph thank you for your mail. I was walking in the Alps for 2 days (Oetztal) Next week I will go to my parents for 2 weeks, my yearly visit.
Of course for me it would nicer if you came to Germany working but its clear its easier for you to find something in the US.
Since I have a permanent job in computers I feel much more relaxed than before, e.g.I sleep much better now. Before almost every second night I could not sleep, because all the time in the back of my mind I was waiting for the end of the contract Now I have slept well every night since many weeks.
In particle physics its very difficult to do important new things. I am not even sure that I have heard important NEW things at all in all those years, most of the things like the existence of the 3rd generation had been predicted before I started particle physics. What do you think were the important new things during our active period?
So the main thing what happened that my idealism (like that of many others) was exploited and only a few were rewarded. Of course I would be happy if I could have remained a researcher, that was always was my dream, but there were too many others with the same dream and stronger 'social' abilities.
You ask what is significant? I dont know. Maybe just staying young in mind and not becoming conservative.
I am now doing writing and philosophy which always were my second interest besides science. I am reading Bertrand Russells Problems of Philosophy in which he critically summarizes the lines of the famous philosophers.-some fundamental problems, much sophism. Please look at my website bodolampe.de/philo.htm best wishes Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Freitag, 11. August 2000 23:32 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Your Messages
Dear Bodo,
Thanks for you messages. I have just finished teaching and will be away for a few days on holiday. There is an APS meeting which will address the future of High Energy in the US, I will ask the people who went what happened.
I am not terribly optimistic about the field, I do not think the rate of new experimental discoveries will be enough to keep the theory really lively and interesting.
Some of the older and more senior people have told me that if they were young today they would choose another field. Maybe I will go ahead and move into a new area.
I spent part of the summer teaching myself C when I had time off from teaching, next I will attack C++ and perhaps Perl. I am not 100% sure about whether I want to move to Germany, also I think that a company will want to interview me and that will be easier for an American Company. But I will make additional enquiries with some friends who run a software business before deciding.
Best Regards,
Joseph
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Montag, 21. August 2000 05:01 An: Lampe.Bodo@web.de; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: bol@mppmu.mpg.de; t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: AW: Your Messages
Dear Bodo,
Thanks for your messages.
I am busy preparing for the new semester and will soon be bsuy again.
As you might have heard, there was a plan to build a muon ring at Fermilab for use as a neutrino factory. Apparently the development work is being slowed down on that project. There is a possibility of lay-offs at Fermilab and Slac among people doing development. This will not be good news for the high energy field in the US and worldwide if they go ahead with these plans.
A colleague was at the ICHEP meeting in Japan recently and there was a session on future accelerators. Everybody agrees on the need for a high energy NLC but there is a lot of controversy about the location. There is money for just one such machine worldwide and each major lab wants to have it. For now I heard that DESY is going ahead with construction of a new linac even though they do not have an official budget for the project. Maybe the other European countries will later contribute to the project.
Under such circumstances, the whole project will probably take a long time. I suppose with so many experimenters busy with LHC, there will be no move to the NLC before 2007-2008 or so.
Even apart from this long time span, the danger is that many departments may hesitate before hiring high energy phenomenologists. Who wants to hire someone in a filed where funding is short and where new developments are so rare ?
>predicted before I started particle physics. What do you think were the >important new things during our active period?
I think heavy quark effective theory, chiral lagrangians, 2-d conformal field theory as applied to critical phenomena and perhaps the Witten-Seiberg stuff. Perhaps one can add QCD sum rules to the list. Even if neutrino oscillations are discovered soon, there will not be a radical departure from the main ideas of the Standard Model. Many people would add string theory to the list; it is important in that it shows that one can combine relativity and quantum mechanics in a framework outside the usual field theory, but there is still no number calculated from string theory which cannot be obtained any other way. Untill that happens, string theory will be (for me anyway) a mainly formal development.
It is perhaps unlucky for us that we came into the field just after many of the major problems had been solved, but no-one realised it. I am sure that many people of about our age would not have entered high energy theory if they knew that there would be absolutely no new results contradicting the Standard Model from Lep and that the main discovery from Fermi-Lab over a period of eight years would be the top quark with a mass perfectly consistent with the predictions of the Standard Model.
Perhaps I too should try to shift to something more interesting.
Best Regards,
Joseph
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Samstag, 9. September 2000 00:11 An: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: postscriptum
Dear Bodo,
Perhaps you heard the news, but there was a meeting in CERN recently where where the experiments presented their newest results on the Higgs search, ALEPH sees the largest deviation from background, about 3.9 \sigma. The other experiments see deviations but much smaller. This corresponds to a Higgs Mass of about 110 GeV.
In a few days the CERN council should decide whether or not to run Lep for longer than scheduled to see if the effect is for real or whether to shut down Lep as planned and go onto the LHC. The problem is if they have a new run of even just 2 months it means delaying the LHC by a full year. Why this is so I do not know, but it seems to be the case. So it is a difficult decision. My feeling is they should go ahead and run for longer since there is no immediate competition for the LHC for exploring TeV scale phenomenology anyway.
If they go ahead and find a higgs at this mass, then it will be a strong boost for minimal SUSY. Maybe this is also why they think this decision is important.
Best Regards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Mittwoch, 13. September 2000 18:08 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: AW: AW: Your Messages
Dear Joseph thank for your mail. I was on holiday for a few weeks, first to my parents place and afterwards to Italy, the adriatic coast, where I did some swimming and sightseeing.
Here are my comments:
>As you might have heard, there was a plan to build a muon ring at >Fermilab for use as a neutrino factory. Apparently the development work >is being slowed down on that project. There is a possibility of lay-offs at >Fermilab and Slac among people doing development. This will not be good news >for the high energy field in the US and worldwide if they go ahead with >these plans.
I heard about the muon ring, but technically it seems to be very difficult. Of course for the Higgs it might be interesting, but only for Higgses in a certain mass range ... I forgot the details.
>A colleague was at the ICHEP meeting in Japan recently and there was a >session on future accelerators. Everybody agrees on the need for a high >energy NLC but there is a lot of controversy about the location. There is >money for just one such machine worldwide and each major lab wants to have >it. For now I heard that DESY is going ahead with construction of a new linac >even though they do not have an official budget for the project. Maybe the >other European countries will later contribute to the project.
Since the LHC is in Europe, DESY will have a difficult stand, because they will argue that another continent should get the opportunity of another accelerator. Of course, if in America they say we are not interested, or, we do not have money for that, DESY might get a chance. Anyhow, the lumis are very small at the NLC in contrast to LEP, so its difficult to make precise experiments, an the particles they can produced will also be produced by the LHC. I was always more in favour of hadron colliders, although I cannot judge how difficult it is to tackle the large cross sections.
>Under such circumstances, the whole project will probably take a long time. >I suppose with so many experimenters busy with LHC, there will be no move >to the NLC before 2007-2008 or so.
>Even apart from this long time span, the danger is that many >departments may hesitate before hiring high energy phenomenologists. Who wants >to hire someone in a filed where funding is short and where new developments >are so rare ?
I have no comment on that. Of course to some extent the development of a field and the positions available are decoupled, because determined by irrational effects. For example in Germany many theory positions are filled by formal people, (axiomatics,mathematics,strings,differentialgeometricstuff) although its difficult to see, in what respect they brought quantum theory forward in the last fifty years.
>predicted before I started particle physics. What do you think were the >important new things during our active period?
>I think heavy quark effective theory, chiral lagrangians, 2-d conformal >field theory as applied to critical phenomena and perhaps the Witten-Seiberg >stuff. Perhaps one can add QCD sum rules to the list. Even if neutrino >oscillations are discovered soon, there will not be a radical departure >from the main ideas of the Standard Model. Many people would add string >theory to the list; it is important in that it shows that one can combine >relativity and quantum mechanics in a framework outside the usual field >theory, but there is still no number calculated from string theory which >cannot be obtained any other way. Untill that happens, string theory will >be (for me anyway) a mainly formal development.
But why did we not work on HQET and all this stuff? For my part the answer is that I always found these things not so interesting. Of course there are uninteresting things that are important like the work of a dentist ... but in this case I dont think they are important either.
>It is perhaps unlucky for us that we came into the field just after many of >the major problems had been solved, but no-one realised it. I am sure that >many people of about our age would not have entered high energy theory if they >knew that there would be absolutely no new results contradicting the Standard >Model from Lep and that the main discovery from Fermi-Lab over a >period of eight years would be the top quark with a mass perfectly consistent >with the predictions of the Standard Model.
in experimental physics you are forced to accept that you can become old without ever making an important discovery, just because there is nothing new to be discovered. In theory if you are alredy working on a field and cannot switch so easily, you have in principle the chance to be imaginative and bring your field forward. This is what we missed, we were not brave enough to invent something really new, but were oriented towards known things. Of course, in all these advertisers screaming of hundreds of preprints every month it is difficult to get heard, and there is an automatic selection of the big shots' papers being taken important, and to become a big shot you must have a certain personality which I dont have.
>Perhaps you heard the news, but there was a meeting in CERN recently where >where the experiments presented their newest results on the Higgs search, >ALEPH sees the largest deviation from background, about 3.9 \sigma. The >other experiments see deviations but much smaller. This corresponds to a >Higgs Mass of about 110 GeV.
i did not hear about this effect: hearing about it now my first impulse; in particular since i do not like susy very muc; is to say this is psychology: they want to be in the papers and since they havent found anything new at lep before they claim to have something at a corner where it will take some time to get falsified: this is a much better strategy than the things before like the leptoquark at desy; because it could be falsified almost immediately:
BEST WISHES BODO
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Montag, 16. Oktober 2000 02:47 An: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: AW: AW: Your Messages
Dear Bodo,
Thanks for your reply.
As you probaly heard, the LEP run has been extended untill the end of October to check the Higgs signal in detail. I do not think they have found anything but there is no harm in pushing up a few discovery limits before the LHC begins.
I was doing some background reading on linear colliders the other day; the project will cost about $ 7 Billion and probably take at least 8 years to build. In the US the problem is that FermiLab has only another five years with the Tevatron and then no-one knows what comes next. That is why they want this as their next big machine but so does SLAC. In the competition between the two big labs it is not clear which one will win. I do not expect such a machine to go online in the US before 2010 at the earliest, more likely a few years later especially given the funding situation.
I do not know what DESY has planned for a time framework for their linear collider, but I do not expect anything for the next 7-8 years at least.
I do not plan to do much more work in NLC phenomenology, I think that all the reasonable calculations have been essentially done. There will still be scope for radiative corrections and maybe some new models, but certainly not much with the Standard Model or Higgs.
I have no intention of waiting for the NLC or LHC, I am planning research projects in other areas.
>But why did we not work on HQET and all this stuff? For my part the answer >is >that I always found these things not so interesting.
I would have worked on HQET if I could have found someone interested in collaborating in that area with me. I have always considered effective field thoery an important conceptual step forward, i.e. how to calculate loops even though the theory is not valid to arbitrarily short distance scales. It is not obvious that this can be done.
I heard there were not too many people interested in the German Green card program, if there is a liberalisation in the US there will be even less interest in places like Germany. Has your company hired any such people ?
Best Regards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Freitag, 20. Oktober 2000 09:22 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: AW: AW: AW: Your Messages
Dear Joseph, thank you for your mail. I havent heard about LEP, because I have no connections to HEP any more, so for me its valuable, if you keep me informed. Also, since I am concentrating on other interests, I didnt find the time to work on SSB and how the Higgs field comes about, which would still interest me. Since you say, you are interested in effective theories: isnt it interesting to get the Higgs Lagrangian as a sort of effective interaction?
>I would have worked on HQET if I could have found someone interested in >collaborating in that area with me. I have always considered effective field >thoery an important conceptual step forward, i.e. how to calculate loops >even though the theory is not valid to arbitrarily short distance scales. >It is not obvious that this can be done.
i agree, effective field theory is interesting; but i was not so interested in b-quark bound states; because too low energies are involved. also i think the heavy quark limit is an additional assumtion.
>I heard there were not too many people interested in the German Green card >program, if there is a liberalisation in the US there will be even less >interest in places like Germany. Has your company hired any such people ?
no they didnt: but they are still optimistic that more people will come: one problem is that most of the people with interest are from the far-away-parts of russia or so, and do not speak english or german; therefore they are not so interesting for the firms:
>I have no intention of waiting for the NLC or LHC, I am planning research >projects in other areas.
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS; IN WHAT AREAS?
best wishes Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Freitag, 17. November 2000 20:11 An: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@bilbo.nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: AW: AW: AW: Your Messages
Dear Bodo,
In case you did not hear, Maiani has decided not to run Lep-2 next year but has left the final decision to the CERN Council. The evidence for a Higgs looks better but still not enough to claim a discovery. For the 5 sigma limit they would need some additional running next year.
I was looking at the online transparencies from the Osaka meeting in Summer.
Everybody agrees that we need a new accelerator but nobody can agree on where it will be. Fermilab wants such a facility and they had a meeting there a few weeks ago. I did not attend, but according to some colleagues who did go there was not too much very exciting happenning. From budgetary constraints it wil be hard to go above 500 GeV initially even if the physics interest at such energies is rather limited. If SUSY is correct, it could be that there are no sparticles produced at a colider with this sqrt(s). However, many talks still made out that there was a lot that could be done at this energy. In private many people agree that it is wiser to go to about 1 TeV where there will be certainly more to discover, but that will take too long. Even the 500 GeV machine will not be built for another seven years or so (earliest) possibly for another nine or more years.
It is also possible that due to funding delays the wait is even longer.
As for the LHC, the official starting date is 2005, but no-one expect that is realistic. In addition, the experimenters expect that they will need perhaps a year (based on Tevatron experience) to really understand their detectors. So I do not expect any physics results from the LHC before 2007-2008.
It has now become a waiting game for the theorists. In the meanwhile the large extra dimension craze continues unabated. This is even worse than SUSY because is is still harder to rule out. Even if SUSY is discovered, there are still 105 parameters in the MSSM which need to be fixed. This will take at least fifteen-twenty years. Why anyone wants to replace the 17 parameter Standard Model which works well with one containing 105 parameters is hard to understand. Fashion is too powerful in HEP these days.
I sometimes wish that the senior people had been more honest with me earlier in my career about these long time spans involved, then I could have made the decision to leave HEP earlier.
You may have made the right decision at the right time.
Best REgards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, 4 Gesendet: Montag, 20. November 2000 11:08 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: Your Message
Dear Joseph, Nice to hear from you. From your mail I conclude that they have not finally decided whether to run LEP2 next year but that Maiani tends to shut it down. No, I didnt hear anything about that. The only thing I do, I sometimes look into hep-ph, whether there are papers which might interest me.
What you say about the developments in HEP: I still think one could find interesting problems in theoretical-HEP. However, There are too many careerists who bring the topics in very strange lights. Many of them, for example, are pressing for SUSY or b-physics, and since they are so many there is no room for other things (most jobs in Germany in the last years were gigen to SUSY and b-quark people), and thats one of the reason why I was thrown out. Of course there is also the general point of missing ideas.
In science you have only the alternative to make a career or to lose (where carreer doesnt mean making good science, that is for sure). In my present work this is different. They let you live even if you are just doing your work. So I am not following a career now, I am just doing my work and living for my other interests. On the last weekend I put together a PC from its components. Its much simpler than I thoght. The only problem which I have is with the hard drive. For the new big ones (mine is 30GB) there seem to be different standards, so either my bios doesnt recognize it correctly or its a problem of the Linux software, where fdisk only recognizes 8GB. I sometimes wonder how these new fast CPUs could solve my old MC simulation programs and problems, but I dont have time to analyze that.
Of course, in theoretical HEP, since you have no good experiments any more, there is a lot of ambiguity, and this is what people like Neubert, Wagner, Buchmueller, Mannel and all the others have been making use of. Its like a big market, where you have to develop the right PR techniques, produce good contacts to the senior people and once you are a darling you tend to become everybodies darling etc. I dont think its worth to discuss more about it.
Of course many things happen by chance.
I wonder how in earlier days the really new developments were possible.
I am trying to write a book about the seventies and eighties, when I was a student. mostly fiction stuff about those times, I am trying to catch the feeling of being young and living in Hamburg during that period.
best wishes
Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Freitag, 1. Dezember 2000 01:46 An: Lampe Dr. Bodo, A; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@bilbo.nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: Your Message
Dear Bodo,
Shortly after my last message I received the news that ther CERN Council supported Maiani's decision to shut down Lep and go ahead with the LHC as planned. Talking to colleagues in experiment this is not so strange, even if Lep had extra running time next year they could have established a 5 sigma effect but would not have had enough statistics to clearly distinguish a Higgs from a new Z prime or so other new effect. Furthermore, at 115 GeV, there is not much chance for the Tevatron detectors to establish a 5 sigma signal. So CERN can afford to wait.
>Many of them, for example, are pressing for SUSY or b-physics,
I too used to be very sceptical about b- physics. However, with the new B factories on-line there are some interesting things that can be done with B Physics. So it is important, more important than SUSY, but not quite enough to justify the many positions given.
About SUSY, I was reading the summary talk given by Richter at the Lepton Photon Meeting last year. He stated very clearly that SUSY should be treated as a fashion and in its present form is not really an improvement on the Standard Model. More importantly, he said that from an experimental perspective, more emphasis should be placed on top and Higgs studies than on SUSY searches. IT is nice to see a senior respected person making a clear statement of this nature. Another point he made was that there is a real danger that in future experiment at the LHC, the trigger rejection criteria may be biased too much towards some popular model and may reject events which might be the signal for new physics of a very unexpected kind. Lepton colliders are better in this respect because all events can be collected and later studied.
I was also reading the proceeedings of the Aachen conference on LHC physics, Rubbia claimed that the LHC would be running by 1997 ! That is about 10 years off target! Had I been aware that this would be the case, I would have planned my career differently. I think senior people like this who mislead beginning scientists as I was in 1990 should be more responsible.
>I wonder how in earlier days the really new developments were possible. I Think before you needed to have a theory to be falsifiable before it was widely accepted. With the Quark-Model, they decisive point was the correct prediction of the mass of the Omega Minus. With QCD the discovery of the gluon jet at TASSO was crucial, along with the discovery of charm.
Similarly, General Relativity made a very clear prediction for the bending of light in the solar gravitational field which would have killed the theory if it had not been verified. Today's theories have no such requirements which is the crucial difference.
I myself have been thinking about the mass of the top in more detail. I was trying to make an analogy with hadronic physics where SU(3) is a good symetry even though the strange quark mass is so heavy compared with the up and down becasue the mass splitting is small compared with some hadronic
MT=MB=0 IS A LIMIT THEY SOMETIMES CONSIDER I FORGOT HOW ITS CALLED scale. Similarly, the t-b mass splitting may be small compared with some more fundamental scale . With the top mass being so large that scale could be a 2-3 TeV. The solution to the hierarchy problem may be non-perturbative as a result. This may seem strange, but if we make the reasonable assumption that the smallness of the cosmological constant is a non-perturbative result, then the higgs constribution to to the cosmological constribution must be cancelled by some non-perturbative feature of some new model. This points to a relation between the higgs and non-perturbative physics at some higher scale. In that case much of the usual reasoning about the hierarchy problem based on perturbation theory may be incorrect.
Actually, we know that part of the contribution to the cosmological constant is non-perturbative in origin, the contribution from the QCD quark and gluon condensates.
In such a scenario, all the LHC would find is a light higgs. And the significance on the One TeV energy scale may not be so great.
I will not do anything with this idea, but it is just an exercise for me to think on different lines. This is something that the present post-doc. system does not encourage. Also bad I think is that the present system does not contain any mechanism for allowing people to look at problems outside HEP. As you may know Feynman left HEP for about ten years since he found more interesting and challenging problems in other areas. Same with Bethe, and even Gell-Mann has done great work in condensed matter physics.
When we consider that so few of the post-docs and students will get permanent jobs in High Energy, it is very unfortunate that teh system is so inflexible. I now realise there are some very novel techniques in nuclear physics, particularly relating to non-perturbative effects which which I would never have been exposed to had I continued along the traditional path. A few months ago I attended my first nuclear physics conference and heard about a range of problems more interesting andf relevant than much of the work in high energy.
Perhaps I will continue in some other branch of physics, or perhaps I will leave science alltogether, but I am rather annoyed with a system which forces people to become overfocussed on a narrow range of problems which often cannot lead to any long term result while ignoring more interesting problems elsewhere.
Best REgards,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, A Gesendet: Mittwoch, 6. Dezember 2000 16:12 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: AW: Your Message
Dear Joseph
about Richters talk: I think I agree with him, however I guess his talk will not impress the big, big Susymafia. In my opinion even QCD is not a well established theory, because its difficult to make firm predictions and - mainly - because its difficult to test them. Ok some regimes have been tested, but by far not the complete theory (eg glueball predictions). Therefore I was always stunned about people who put other theories, like SUSY or GUTS on top of it, and I still feel uneasy about it, and think that if one does not contribute to QCD, it is better to make improvements on electroweak in a way which does not presuppose QCD being true for the strong interactions. The simple quark-parton model is another story, that is acceptible, but I am not sure about the existence of gluons exactly as QCD predicts them . about Rubbias talk: I think many people knew better already at that time, but why should they send young students away? Many Seniors need younger students as sort of slaves to do caluclations on their (the seniors) ideas, which in many cases are not very bright. For example, there is Andreas Schaefer from Regensburg. He has a really large group of 15 or 20 students, who are all working on ideas, which come to him in between some meetings and without much impact or even consistency. If he would tell them the truth, he would loose most of them, and all the steam and seem-so dynamics of his institute would vanish. So professors in many cases dont have an interest to tell younger people the truth.
please excuse my english, its getting worse and worse, since I do not practise it any more.
"I myself have been thinking about the mass of the top in more detail. I was trying to make an analogy with hadronic physics where SU(3) is a good symetry even though the strange quark mass is so heavy compared with the up and down becasue the mass splitting is small compared with some hadronic" I think 0=mt=mb<mH is a limit often considered in electroweak calculations You should look at the corresponding papers
"The solution to the hierarchy problem may be non-perturbative as a result." I agree, but do you have an idea how to proceed?Should one start with condensates of Higgses and W's? Did anybody do that? I would be interested to continue on this idea.
Recently I looked through old notes of 10 years ago, and came across the following idea. I want to construct a Lagrangian which is symmetric under transformations of (vector)fields and (spacetime)coordinates, that is under transformations \delta A_\mu ~ x_\mu \delta x_\mu ~ A_\mu or in 1 dimension (mechanics) \delta x ~ t \delta t ~ x Have you ever come across such transformations?
"I will not do anything with this idea, but it is just an exercise for me to think on different lines. This is something that the present post-doc. system does not encourage. Also bad I think is that the present system does not contain any mechanism for allowing people to look at problems outside HEP. As you may know Feynman left HEP for about ten years since he found more interesting and challenging problems in other areas. Same with Bethe, and even Gell-Mann has done great work in condensed matter physics.
When we consider that so few of the post-docs and students will get permanent jobs in High Energy, it is very unfortunate that teh system is so inflexible. I now realise there are some very novel techniques in nuclear physics, particularly relating to non-perturbative effects which which I would never have been exposed to had I continued along the traditional path. A few months ago I attended my first nuclear physics conference and heard about a range of problems more interesting andf relevant than much of the work in high energy." This system supports people with a narrow horizon, thats for sure, and the ignorance among the higher rank HEphysicists is partly due to that.
best wishes Bodo
---------- Von: t41@nikhef.nl[SMTP:t41@nikhef.nl] Gesendet: Mittwoch, 20. Dezember 2000 00:43 An: Lampe Dr. Bodo, A; t41@nikhef.nl Cc: t41@bilbo.nikhef.nl Betreff: Re: AW: Your Message
Dear Bodo,
Thanks for your reply.
I am quite certain that QCD is true, the most recent lattice results on the ratio of hadronic masses are sufficiently close to experiment to be convincing. About the glueballs, more work needs to be done but I suspect that the amount of mixing with the quarks is such that it is very hard to experimentally distinguish a glueball contribution from a regular meson. But it would certainly be nice to have more non-perturbative tools at our disposal to finish the job.
>I am not sure about the existence of gluons exactly as QCD predicts
I think most of the experimental evidence for gluons comes from the three and four jet events at e+e- colliders. In particular, it is significant that even though a gluonic jet may contain overwhelmingly spin-zero particles, the angular distribution of the jet corresponds to that of a spin 1 particle being radiated. This suggest very strongly that there is a spin one parent particle.
>"The solution to the hierarchy problem may be non-perturbative
>I agree, but do you have an idea how to proceed?
Actually, I will not really work on this idea. I was merely thinking of alternative schemes. I was looking at a recent talk by BJorken, he made the very interesting point that if there is indeed new physics at intervals of 1 TeV between the TeV scale and the Planck scale, then most of our current thinking about the hierarchy problem is incorrect. I see no problem with this idea. I do not think the idea of a desert between the TeV scale and the GUT scale is so great. Of course if this is true, we can neglect most unification schemes on the market. In the same talk he also makes a very useful point concerning quantum gravity. He points out that we have a working theory of quantum gravity at distances which are not too small. As you may recall, Feynman was able to calculate the precession of the perihelion of Merucry starting with spin 2 exchange. Where this approach breaks down is at very short distances, where a full quantum theory is required. But at all other scales where we really have tested general relativity, we can write down an effective field theory which works. It is interesting that in the past no-one bothered with QED untill there was a problem explaining the Lamb Shift and (g-2) of the electron. The only reason the renormalisation program was taken seriously was because it explained the above numbers.
Nowadays, people worry about quantum gravity without really needing it to explain anything like the Lamb Shift and in the absence of such quantities it is not surprising that there is no progress. It was not easy to formulate QED even though the classical theory was so well understood. With gravity, even the classical theory is very challenging.
>transformations >\delta A_\mu ~ x_\mu >\delta x_\mu ~ A_\mu >or in 1 dimension (mechanics) >\delta x ~ t >\delta t ~ x >Have you ever come across such transformations?
No, I have not.
Greetings,
Joseph
---------- Von: Lampe Dr. Bodo, A Gesendet: Donnerstag, 28. Dezember 2000 11:07 An: 't41@nikhef.nl' Betreff: AW: AW: Your Message
Dear Joseph, thank you for your mail. I have been on Christmas holidays for 10 days.
about the high energy regime of gravity: there are no data there and therefore room for all kinds of insignificant speculations like superstring and all that stuff, I agree. On the other hand, also for me, I admit, it is the most interesting region. In the last few weeks I have worked a little on this old area of interest, whether there is a physical significance of UV singularities in field theory beyond the purely formal treatment of regularization. I was following 2 models: 1. assume that at the Planckscale there is a sort of dispersion which modifies the ordinary relation between energy and distance E=hbar*c/d, such that at small distances the energy decreases with distance. (Physically this may be due to a sort of Plancklattice, on which the (matter)waves scatter or disperse. I dont have a particular model for that, but am willing to develop.) It is clear that such a modification removes the ordinary UV singularities of a field theory like in particular quantum gravity and replaces it by finite results, which may or may not depend on the particular form of the dispersion relation. 2. another still more speculative model I was following is the possibility that 4dim space time is a sort of product of 2 2dim spaces. Write x_AB=x_mu*sigma^mu, where sigma are the Pauli matrices and A,B=1,2 spin indices, and write xAB=y_A*z_B, with 2component objects y and z. (I think this is similar to the socalled twistor approach, and a drawback is that on the first place only xAB on the light cone can be represented this way, all other x_AB have to be constructed as linear combinations of y_A*z_B). At this stage, even if it works, the decomposition of spacetime is just an identical rewriting. So in order to deal with UV singularities, I would like to introduce a sort of distance between the two 2dim spaces Y(formed by the y_A) and Z(formed by the z_B), and the distance should be defined in a way as to regulate the UV limit.
about QCD: I would be much more happy, if they ad found an unambigous signal of glueballs. That would have removed my doubts on the existence of gluons - in the QCD sense of selfinteracting gauge fields. I do not doubt that some spin1-like objects are exchanged in jet at e+e- production, but the gluon self interaction is one order higher, and a small effect. about the classical regime of gravity: in what respect do you find it challenging? Most theories of gravity do not differ in this limit, and for me grav. waves are beyond doubt, in a sense they are more reasonable than gluons. Do you have particular questions in mind?
best wishes Bodo