Hi there everyone. I'm in an adjacent field, mathematics, and currently work as a teacher. I am curious about the best way to keep up with people who do research if you aren't in academia? A similar question on here was asked and I was able to connect with some people, but I'm not sure if there's a consistent way to find such people. I ended up resorted to YouTube channels by researchers and messaging them, but some of them are professional researchers and probably can't always connect with random inquiries, especially if I'm not necessarily looking to collaborate right away. Only thing that worked was research experiences for teachers which were research programs specifically for teachers.

But outside of that, I have to keep a lot of my scientific interests to myself, my colleagues are great but find my spare time hobbies to be weird, to say the least. When I can make it to local seminars, at least I can socialize on something that's important to me and that makes contact easier.

Also, I mean, sure, there's stackexchange, and conferences, but some seminars and conferences don't always work for me due the scheduling as a teacher, and stackexchange isn't really as good as it used to be, especially with the advent of AI.

Hey everyone!

I’m trying to seriously build my career toward theoretical physics, and I’m curious about what the field is actually going to look like in the coming years.

I know the fundamentals are obviously the most important part — math, classical mechanics, QM, GR, QFT, etc. — but I want to specifically focus on the software/computational side right now.

For someone who wants to become a theoretical physicist, what programming languages, software, tools, frameworks, and computational skills are actually worth learning?

For example:

Which language should I prioritize — Python, C++, Julia, Mathematica, etc.?

How important are NumPy/SciPy, SymPy, JAX, PyTorch, etc.?

Should I learn Mathematica / Wolfram Language or is Python enough?

How important are HPC, CUDA/GPU computing, Linux, Git, Bash, clusters, etc.?

Are there any specific physics packages/tools I should know?

What software skills do researchers in theoretical physics, particle physics, astrophysics/cosmology, condensed matter, etc. actually use?

Basically, if you could go back and prepare for a career in theoretical physics from the software side, what would you learn and in what order?

I’m currently trying to make a proper roadmap for myself, so I’d really appreciate advice from people actually working/researching in the field.

My main question right now is: what should I learn on the software/computational side to be genuinely useful as a theoretical physicist, rather than just learning random programming skills?

Thanks!

Black-hole thermodynamics associates an event horizon with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, which is proportional to its area:

S_BH = (k_B · c³ · A) / (4 · G · ℏ)

Expressed in bits, this entropy corresponds to:

N_bits = S_BH / (k_B · ln 2)

Consider an information-theoretic description in which crossing an event horizon does not destroy information, but changes how the structure of an infalling system is encoded.

As an extreme limiting case, suppose that the locally accessible distinction approaches a binary one:

C(S) ∈ {0,1}

This would obviously not be enough to reconstruct the original structure by itself, since many different states S could map to the same local code.

But what if the missing structural information is not lost? Instead, it could become distributed through correlations in the black hole and, eventually, Hawking radiation:

S_object -> S_BH -> S_Hawking

Then the interesting distinction would be between three different things:

Information preservation is not the same as structural preservation, and neither is the same as reconstructibility.

Could an event horizon therefore be treated as a boundary where the locally distinguishable structure becomes drastically compressed, while the full information remains encoded nonlocally in correlations?

And if so, would the relevant quantity be the information contained in the system itself, or the number of structural distinctions still accessible from a given perspective?

Dear theoretical physicists,

I am looking for some guidance in these hard times for academia. 2 years ago, I defended a PhD in theoretical condensed matter (on some numerical approximation scheme on the strongly correlated Hubbard model). My advisor has been very toxic, and even told me she would not support me if I find a postdoc position. She spent my phd telling me I'm not good enough for that, or that I should rather do some vulgarisation because "I explain things well"..

Anyway, after this terrible experience, and given the state of academia, I left. I didn't wanted to go for a postdoc and live my country, friends and family for a life a constant publication pressure in order to have a chance to apply to a contest to a low paid job (for reference, I live in France and want to stay there).

I got the chance to find a job in applied physics, on HPC simulation. I now have great colleagues and it is decently paid. But I have so many different things on my mind. First, I'm working on finite elements/volume codes in mechanics, not at all anymore in what i always loved : statistical physics. Second, I'm not really developing anything in these codes, I'm in a company that does some technical supports, formations and projects on these codes. So I either explain someone who does not care about physics that he needs to use this keyword to get his simulation done, do some PowerPoint to explain how to use the code, and very rarely I have some project when I can develop new basic physics (like a PDE in finite element formulation) in the code and do a merge request.

I never really wanted to quit, but, between the situation of academia and my advisor, I had to. My colleagues are nice, but I feel terribly lonely, they dont understand anything I can say on quantum physics, and they don't really care. I lost contact with many old friends in condensed matter, the other gave up on physics. Out of sheer will, I decided to open a website, on which I'm writing up some notes, tackling many physics through the lens of differential geometry. Of course, I'm looking for collaboration on this project, that was the point of it (if you are interested message me for details). But not someone from academia, as I can barely give in 6h a week.

Still, this does not solve the intellectual loneliness, and the feeling of losing my time to some boring job when all Id like to do is ask questions on scale transition from quantum to macro. I want to do math, to think with people on how on earth we can be made of tiny atoms, how these assembles to give... everything I see around.

Anyway, it is a long post to ask: are some of you in a similar situation? How do you deal with the frustration? Do you have any ideas of positions outside of academia (or even within if it still exists in france, as long as it's a permanent position because I'm also starting a family)?

Thank you for taking the time to read all of this. I am genuinely suffering from this situation, I need to talk to a community that can understand the eternal dilemma of the job market in academia and living as a physicist outside of it.

Ps- I know about quantum computing, but I am quite scared of applying because I dont really believe it will ever lead to something profitable and I think at some point not so distant in the futurethese jobs risk to reach a sudden end.

I'm in the process of reading the Kogut 1979 review paper on lattice field theories and I have two quick questions.

Firstly, why is the existence of a mass gap related to confinement? Kogut himself shows that a mass gap is equivalent to the inverse of a correlation length in a corresponding statistical field theory. Confinement is related to area vs perimeter law for a Wilson loop expectation value. I don't see how those two are related.

Secondly, Kogut also mentions that the continuum limit of a lattice field theory is only obtainable if the lattice system is at phase transition, which makes intuitive sense since that's where there is long (infinite) range correlation, therefore there should not be small fluctuations* that prohibit us from taking a continuum limit. However, this implies that any field theory obtained from a continuum limit of a lattice field theory must have massless excitations. We expect QCD to be obtained from lattice QCD, yet we expect QCD to have confinement and a mass gap.

*Edit: I believe the correct statement is that the system lacks a characteristic length scale, allowing us to take a continuum limit.

1) Why did you specifically choose this field rather than Experimental Physics or Pure/Applied Mathematics?

2) What university/country did you complete your PhD from?

3) How long did it take to obtain your PhD?

4) What was the topic research area and what were the main challenges you faced?

5) What was your highest educational qualification at the time of entering your PhD and what was your background prior to it (e.g. Bachelors and Masters degree)?

Thank you very much!:)

Can you guys explain these papers to me?

I don’t really understand this kind of physics, but I have a strong gut feeling that this guy is full of shit and he’s a gimmick. Am I wrong?

I'm reading Khrennikov's recent paper Quantum Entanglement from Theory of Classical Gaussian Processes, and I think I may be misunderstanding what is meant by “generation” of an entangled state in the Gaussian DCM.

Paper link : Quantum Entanglement from Theory of Classical Gaussian Processes

The construction starts with an arbitrary entangled state |Ψ⟩, takes its Schmidt decomposition, and then constructs the corresponding classical Gaussian processes, eventually recovering the state |Ψ⟩⟨Ψ|.

Does DCM have some independent rule that determines the temporal modes/covariance structure and produces the state, or is the construction basically showing that for any chosen quantum state, one can construct a classical Gaussian process that reproduces it?

I'm specifically asking about this construction, not whether DCM replaces QM in general.

This weekly thread is dedicated for questions about physics and physical mathematics.

Some questions do not require advanced knowledge in physics to be answered. Please, before asking a question, try r/askscience and r/AskPhysics instead. Homework problems or specific calculations may be removed by the moderators if it is not related to theoretical physics, try r/HomeworkHelp instead.

If your question does not break any rules, yet it does not get any replies, you may try your luck again during next week's thread. The moderators are under no obligation to answer any of the questions. Wait for a volunteer from the community to answer your question.

LaTeX rendering for equations is allowed through u/LaTeX4Reddit. Write a comment with your LaTeX equation enclosed with backticks (`) (you may write it using inline code feature instead), followed by the name of the bot in the comment. For more informations and examples check our guide: how to write math in this sub.

This thread should not be used to bypass the avoid self-theories rule. If you want to discuss hypothetical scenarios try r/HypotheticalPhysics.

If all energy was packed in a singularity, infinite energy should create infinite gravity. Wouldn't that pull everything inward and prevent an explosion? How did the universe expand instead of collapsing?

I appreciate the idea of trying to come up with an intuitive picture of gravity. But to the self studied or aspiring physicists: please read this first

Every day I see countless posts asking “what if gravity was actually a jargon jargon jargon flux???” and then an actually half decent question buried in a mountain of LLM junk. There was some idea or realization that you had that would be really cool to talk about… but then you slop it up by trying to explain it with math despite not dedicating years of your life to these really subtle questions (like academics do)

So, I wanted to talk about a few points that I regularly see in crackpot posts.

First, the graviton. For some reason, people hate the graviton and come up with ideas to try to make it go away. I think it’s just because we haven’t detected one directly… but this makes it seem like the graviton is like an electron or proton or something. that’s not what the graviton is. that’s not what a particle is.

i mean, ok it is what a particle is but that isn’t how you should think of it. what a graviton is, is the gauge boson for gravity. that means it is the force carrier. if you put two electrons near each other, they will interact. the quantized unit of interaction between them is the gauge boson (here the photon). that is what the graviton does for the gravitational force. it is simply the smallest little excitation in the gravitational field

if you assume there exists a gravitational field, and IF this field is quantized (so you get quantum mechanics) then the graviton is just the quantum of gravity. that is it. you don’t have to fight it.

now, this gravitational “field” ends up being what you think of as an aether. all of the aether posts: you’re just reinventing a field but now things interact improperly.

the way the standard model works, every point in spacetime gets a little tiny bit of information tied to it. a phase. it is undetectable*. as you move through space, imagine making a little loop. when you get back to where you started, you accumulate some phase. the amount you accumulated is the strength of the field. this is the gauge field

you don’t need an aether. you’re asking for the gauge field. it is a real thing.

if the gauge field has a symmetry, Noether’s theorem tells us there is a conserved quantity which corresponds to it. Throwing away a bunch of subtleties, this means we’re basically allowed to pick whatever symmetry of nature we want, assign it to a gauge field, and then see what physical consequence pops out. you need a lot of topology and group theory to do this right

and won’t you know it, when you break these symmetries, other stuff happens. the breaking of a very particular symmetry makes the fields “feel” some directions more than others. it makes some fields feel it more than others. the symmetry breaking of the higgs field is what makes the higgs mechanism work (you may have seen that the higgs is like a “friction” that particles feel).

to end my rant, stop trying to reinvent the wheel. you’re all making sharp and unroll-able wheels. almost every physicist throughout history made wheels that didn’t go anywhere, and it was only through the combined effort of peer review and traditional academic research that progress was made and the holes were patched up. I really hope you dedicate time to learning the absolute beauty that others have figured out rather than trying to make a name for yourself. you’ll be so much more fulfilled and understand our universe with the best of us.

I hope that such a post is appropriate in this subreddit.

I have just found this video on youtube and looked/skipped through some of the parts. The explanations and recaps seem extremely well made.

I wanted to share this with everyone else, as this video, naturally, does not have a lot of views.

This weekly thread is dedicated for questions about physics and physical mathematics.

Some questions do not require advanced knowledge in physics to be answered. Please, before asking a question, try r/askscience and r/AskPhysics instead. Homework problems or specific calculations may be removed by the moderators if it is not related to theoretical physics, try r/HomeworkHelp instead.

If your question does not break any rules, yet it does not get any replies, you may try your luck again during next week's thread. The moderators are under no obligation to answer any of the questions. Wait for a volunteer from the community to answer your question.

LaTeX rendering for equations is allowed through u/LaTeX4Reddit. Write a comment with your LaTeX equation enclosed with backticks (`) (you may write it using inline code feature instead), followed by the name of the bot in the comment. For more informations and examples check our guide: how to write math in this sub.

This thread should not be used to bypass the avoid self-theories rule. If you want to discuss hypothetical scenarios try r/HypotheticalPhysics.

Hello everyone,

I am exploring research ideas related to origin of life and astrobiology particularly involving physical and mathematical modeling of prebiotic systems.

I am interested in areas such as:

Statistical physics ,Information theory ,Nonequilibrium systems ,Chemical dynamics ,Prebiotic chemistry, Mathematical models of early chemical systems

I would really appreciate hearing perspectives from researchers, or anyone with experience in these areas.I am mainly interested in knowing whether this seems like a reasonable and scientifically meaningful direction to explore, and whether there are important considerations I should be aware of before developing it further.

If anyone with experience in this area would be willing to share their perspective or have a brief discussion, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you

This weekly thread is dedicated for questions about physics and physical mathematics.

Some questions do not require advanced knowledge in physics to be answered. Please, before asking a question, try r/askscience and r/AskPhysics instead. Homework problems or specific calculations may be removed by the moderators if it is not related to theoretical physics, try r/HomeworkHelp instead.

If your question does not break any rules, yet it does not get any replies, you may try your luck again during next week's thread. The moderators are under no obligation to answer any of the questions. Wait for a volunteer from the community to answer your question.

LaTeX rendering for equations is allowed through u/LaTeX4Reddit. Write a comment with your LaTeX equation enclosed with backticks (`) (you may write it using inline code feature instead), followed by the name of the bot in the comment. For more informations and examples check our guide: how to write math in this sub.

This thread should not be used to bypass the avoid self-theories rule. If you want to discuss hypothetical scenarios try r/HypotheticalPhysics.

I have a serious question - what proof is there that a down quark is a seperate and unique particle as opposed to an electron hard bound to an up quark?

Let us look at a number of things. First is that when an electron hits a proton with enough force an up quark is changed to a down quark. Note that no energy is released, the extinction event of a negative charge hitting a positive charge does not happen.

Second we look at the fact that a proton plus an electron creates a neutron and a neutron minus an electron produces a proton. This is an identity relationship and very strongly implies the electron was there all along unchanged.

Third if there were an electron at the core of a proton, in spliting the proton into component quarks, the electron would remain bound to one if the up quarks. The only way to separate the two is to instantly accelerate the electron, the up quark being much more massive could not keep up.

Fourth if an electron was bound to an up quark at the macro level it would look like a -1/3 charge but at a subatomic level it would be two seperate charges, which explains a lot about fusion.

Fifth fusion generates a huge amount of gamma rays. Gamma rays are photons. Only electrons generate photons so electrons must be present in the fusing nucleus.

Sixth quantum particles are fields, an electron bound to an up quark is very much a quantum structure.

Seventh this would explain why neutrons decay. We know because of Plank's constant that electrons can not tolerate being close to each other. The one of the two electrons in a neutron eventually due to vibration, pushes the othe out.

Recently I was reading some material about the geometric viewpoint of probability theory, and I came across the idea that classical probability has an affine structure.

I am curious about why this structure appears naturally in probability, rather than simply being a convenient mathematical framework imposed afterward.

My current intuition is not yet developed enough to see why the affine viewpoint is the “right” one. I would especially like to understand the connection through probability distributions, mixtures, convex combinations, or Markov chains.

Are there any references or explanations that discuss this viewpoint clearly?
Thank you!

Hi everyone,

recently I made a post about EFT's in general and I thank you guys very much for answering my questions! I would now have another fundamental question regarding Soft collinear effective theory (SCET). We can restrict ourselves to the scalar phi^3 SCET toy theory. I am using arXiv:1410.1892 as one of my primary sources for study.

My understanding of the construction of the EFT so far is:

1. Split up the field into collinear, anti-collinear and soft contributions (the heavy contributions are integrated out)

2. Plug them into the general phi^3 theory and only leave those which are allowed by momentum conservation

3. Multipole expand the soft fields

Having done that, one finds out that the theory is non-renormalized in any order in perturbation theory as the resulting integrals are always scaleless. So the resulting operators do not have any Wilson coefficients (meaning they are equal to 1).

So here is somewhat where the confusion for me starts. In other effective theories, the approach in my lectures was always to construct the most general Lagrangian for the EFT which respects the symmetries, up to some order in the small parameter. The higher dimensional operators have Wilson coefficients in front of them, which can be determined through matching calculations, where we try to use the respective operators in a given S-matrix element or correlation function.

In the SCET on the other hand we don't seem to know the higher dimensional operators at first. So one now looks at a "hard external" current in the full and then effective theory and finds out that the Wilson coefficients are apparently functions of the collinear and anti-collinear momenta.

And here is the main point I don't really understand, although it should be really basic: We now expect the corresponding position space operator in the EFT to correspond to the Fourier transform of the momentum dependent Wilson coefficient (so we replace all momenta by derivatives) from which it follows that the full operators are non-local.

I don't understand the following: When determining Wilson coefficients, we are computing Feynman diagrams, which give us Lorentz invariant scalars and all of the EFT's I have looked at so far, the Wilson coefficients were simple scalars. Here, the Wilson coefficient is a function of the external momenta, ok, but why should this correspond to the "momentum space Wilson coefficient"? Isn't it just simply the value of the Wilson coefficient, as again, Feynman diagrams don't give us "momentum" or "position" space numbers, but simply Lorentz scalars?

I would highly appreciate any help.

This weekly thread is dedicated for questions about physics and physical mathematics.

Some questions do not require advanced knowledge in physics to be answered. Please, before asking a question, try r/askscience and r/AskPhysics instead. Homework problems or specific calculations may be removed by the moderators if it is not related to theoretical physics, try r/HomeworkHelp instead.

If your question does not break any rules, yet it does not get any replies, you may try your luck again during next week's thread. The moderators are under no obligation to answer any of the questions. Wait for a volunteer from the community to answer your question.

LaTeX rendering for equations is allowed through u/LaTeX4Reddit. Write a comment with your LaTeX equation enclosed with backticks (`) (you may write it using inline code feature instead), followed by the name of the bot in the comment. For more informations and examples check our guide: how to write math in this sub.

This thread should not be used to bypass the avoid self-theories rule. If you want to discuss hypothetical scenarios try r/HypotheticalPhysics.