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History 181B: Modern Physics
Class 44 (5/9/03)
A new world picture?
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| Outline |
The quantum field theoretic picture of nature
Revisiting the many-body problem
Reformulation: Condensed matter physics and QFT
Many-body problems, but the bodies dissolve
Quasiparticles
Collective excitations
Rethinking notions of fundamental particles
Changes in ontology: New
basic constituents
Example: Superconductivity
Lessons for QFT from condensed matter physics
Unification — of what sort?
Universality: Fundamental
particles don't always matter
Attention to scale
The self-understanding of condensed matter physicists |
| Names
and terms |
| Primary |
Secondary |
"More is different"
renormalization
quasiparticle
effective properties (e.g., mass, charge, lifetime)
collective excitation
Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory, NP 1972
Cooper pair
turbulence, chaos theory, fractals |
Phillip Anderson (1923- ), NP 1977
plasmon, phonon
Meissner effect
Bloch's theorem
spontaneous symmetry breaking
renormalization group |
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| Assignment |
P.W. Anderson, "More is Different," Science
177 (1972): 393-396.
What is reductionism, and why did Anderson object
to it?
What did he suggest in its place? Why?
What did he mean his argument about broken symmetries
to show?
Extra: Beyond pure scientific ideas, what
else in the atmosphere of physics in the early 1970s do you think Anderson
was responding to? |
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Copyright © Cathryn Carson 2003 |