[Edit: This post is dedicated to Ed Clark, the fellow who first prodded me into physics; he survived the Hurricane Katrina, had a stroke, and I lost contact with him. He's in my thoughts to date.]
This basically continues the last lecture on quantization of constrained systems.
First Example: Electromagnetism
The electromagnetic tensor has a gauge invariance; [...]
OK, this will be the last post for a few days, I have to write an essay on the rising use of double speak in advertisement in late capitalism (I know, the subject is just an irresistible one: advertisement = propaganda). However, this should not take more than a day and Dr. Carlip is in [...]
OK, he started by giving us four citations:
Isham, Relativity, Groups, and Topology II (1983)
Gotay, dg-ga/9605001
Tillman, gr-qc/0610141
Landsman, quant-ph/0506082
The general topic continues to be how to quantize classical systems. Isham deals with quantization in general, the cited text is actually lecture notes from summer school (Carlip thought very highly of them). Gotay deals with obstructions with quantization, [...]
Why haven’t we quantized gravity yet?
The first attempt that Carlip was aware of was in 1930 by Rosenfield. There have been at least 10 nobel prize winners working on quantum gravity(!).
Actually, effective action and effective potential were invented by Bryce DeWitt as an attempt to quantize gravity.
The two best attempts today are Loop Quantum Gravity [...]
OK, so I’ll basically recount the lectures here as best as I can remember. The first lecture dealt with the Eppley and Hannah thought experiment (their work: Eppley and Hannah, Foundations of Physics 7 (1977) p.51), it deals with the uncertainty principle in classical spacetime. (Recall the Heisenberg Microscope) Basically, if General Relativity is classical [...]
Boy what a fun course! Dr. Carlip is a very funny man.
It has been a very enlightening experience so far. I have a new perspective on nonlocal operators; before I used to be influenced by the Relativist’s motto “Locality, Good! Nonlocality, evil!” But when you think about it with an example, say we want to [...]
