Monthly Archives: November 2008

Latest From the LHC

Posted on November 25, 2008 by woit

A talk at CERN today by Jorg Wenninger gives an update on the problems at Sector 34 and more information about what the prospects are for restarting the machine next year. The cause of the accident has been identified as … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 18 Comments

The Landscape at Princeton

Posted on November 24, 2008 by woit

The Princeton Center for Theoretical Science has been having a mini-symposium on the string theory Landscape, and as part of this today hosted a “panel discussion” on the topic. It turns out that there’s not a lot of support for … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 21 Comments

Notes on BRST V: Highest Weight Theory

Posted on November 23, 2008 by woit

In the last posting we discussed the Lie algebra cohomology [tex]H^*(\mathfrak g, V)[/tex] for [tex]\mathfrak g[/tex] a semi-simple Lie algebra. Because the invariants functor is exact here, this tells us nothing about the structure of irreducible representations in this case. … Continue reading →

Posted in BRST | 4 Comments

The Map of My Life

Posted on November 22, 2008 by woit

Springer has just published an autobiography of Goro Shimura, entitled The Map of My Life. Shimura’s specialty is the arithmetic theory of modular forms, and he’s responsible for a crucial construction generalizing the modular curve, now known as a “Shimura … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 25 Comments

Shouldn’t Something Be Done?

Posted on November 19, 2008 by woit

The sheer awfulness of last night’s History Channel program on physics is hard to exaggerate. Here’s some of what Clifford Johnson (one of the participants in the program) wrote on his blog while watching it: Oh, right… I remember “there … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 39 Comments

Notes on BRST IV: Lie Algebra Cohomology for Semi-simple Lie Algebras

Posted on November 18, 2008 by woit

In this posting I’ll work out some examples of Lie algebra cohomology, still for finite dimensional Lie algebras and representations. If [tex]G[/tex] is a compact, connected Lie group, it can be thought of as a compact manifold, and as such … Continue reading →

Posted in BRST | 2 Comments

Science and Science Fiction

Posted on November 18, 2008 by woit

I just set my DVR to record this evening’s broadcast on the History Channel of Parallel Universes, and noticed that the summary information about the show reads: Some of the world’s leading physicists believe they have found evidence proving the … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 5 Comments

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory

Posted on November 17, 2008 by woit

I recently acquired a copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory, by Scientific American’s George Musser, which has been out for a few months now. It’s a popular-level treatment of modern physics, string theory and quantum gravity, much … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, This Week's Hype | 19 Comments

Notes on BRST III: Lie Algebra Cohomology

Posted on November 16, 2008 by woit

The Invariants Functor The last posting discussed one of the simplest incarnations of BRST cohomology, in a formalism familiar to physicists. This fits into a much more abstract mathematical context, and that’s what we’ll turn to now. Given a Lie … Continue reading →

Posted in BRST | 6 Comments

Notes on BRST II: Lie Algebra Cohomology, Physicist’s Version

Posted on November 15, 2008 by woit

My initial plan was to have the second part of these notes be about gauge symmetry and the problems physicists have encountered in handling it, but as I started writing it quickly became apparent that explaining this in any detail … Continue reading →

Posted in BRST | 15 Comments