Author Archives: woit

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

Short Bits

Posted on November 11, 2008 by woit

More about BRST is on its way, but in the meantime a lot of things have accumulated that might be of interest, so I wanted to do a quick posting about these. One of them does have to do with … Continue reading →

Posted in BRST, Experimental HEP News, Multiverse Mania | 52 Comments

Notes on BRST I: Representation Theory and Quantum Mechanics

Posted on November 5, 2008 by woit

This is the first posting of a planned series that will discuss the BRST method for handling gauge symmetries and related mathematical topics. I’ve been writing a more formal paper about this, but given the substantial amount of not-well-known background … Continue reading →

Posted in BRST | 63 Comments

The Circus Begins

Posted on November 2, 2008 by woit

Friday’s arXiv posting of the paper by CDF about the multi-muon anomaly they are seeing has already generated three different conjectural explanations of what physics might be responsible for this. Undoubtedly many, many more are on the way. Some members … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 24 Comments

Discovery of a New Particle?

Posted on October 30, 2008 by woit

Except for the excitement surrounding first beams in the LHC, particle physics has been an all-too-quiet subject recently. It looks like that may be about to change, with a dramatic new result announced by the CDF experiment this evening, in … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 42 Comments

Job Posting

Posted on October 25, 2008 by woit

This is the time of year during which a large number of physicists and mathematicians must turn their attention to the problem of finding employment for next fall. Physics Today has a jobs site here, which has a new posting … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments