[Today we have a guest post from my flatmate, Jo Benjamin. Jo is an MSc. student at Durham's Centre for Particle Theory. His research project is on black holes in string theory. His post is about useful text for first year students who'd rather avoid slogging through worldsheet string theory.]

The first time I met Flip, the conversation went something along the lines of “Hello”, “Hello”, “I’m Jo”, “I’m Flip”, “Flip?” “Yes, Flip”, etc…, “What course are you doing?”, “A taught particle physics masters”, “That’s stringy, isn’t it?” “It has a string theory module, yes”. This was then followed by some fairly dismissive comments about string theory being a load of rubbish. [1]

In the light of this, I thought I’d cover a topic he probably never will. I am currently writing my dissertation on black hole entropy in string theory and preparing for this has involved reading a lot of string theory books. Hence, I thought I’d dispense my accumulated knowledge on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the books I found from the point of view of someone not wanting to study worldsheet string theory. Indeed, in the process it’s made me ask the question “Why the hell would anyone study worldsheet string theory?!”. Anyway…here goes…

Polchinski (String Theory vol. 1&2)

I had this down as an ‘orrible worldsheet book and almost ignored it. In fact, vol. 1 I did ignore. Generally, a worldsheet book is what it is. However, it just so happens to be a very good one – perfect for looking up all the odd worldsheet details you forgot and need to check on. Written in a clear style. Also, the appendices are fantastic for someone who’s not too happy with SUSY and SUGRA.

Becker, Becker and Schwarz (String Theory and M-Theory)

I really like the style in which this is written. Gives an idea of what the Green-Schwarz formalism is all about which is unusual. Quite comprehensive and has a section on black holes and one introducing AdS/CFT – nice to see some uses of it all in there. Good to dip in and out of for odd topics or to read cover to cover – pretty well all really well explained. A few gaps which isn’t surprising given the scope of the book.

Zwiebach (A First Course in String Theory)

A very basic book. I haven’t used it much but what I have used I’ve liked. Does a lot of things in a different way to other books so is good to see a different approach. The flip side of this is that it also often uses different notation. Still, nice to see things done differently.

Green, Schwarz and Witten (Superstring Theory vol. 1&2)

Confession time…I was put off by the old typewriter text. Oops. All rather worldsheety anyway. Ask someone who’s interested.

Kaku (Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory)

Much of this is on worldsheet string theory which I haven’t really looked at much. The M-theory and brane stuff at the end is explained well and a good place to learn it from. I also like the fact that references are given at the end of each chapter so it’s easy to find a different source of something when you’re struggling to understand it. Excellent appendices called “a brief introduction to [insert assumed knowledge here]”. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Johnson (D-Branes)

As the name suggests, this is very comprehensive on braney stuff which was very good. I tended to use this most and look up things in Becker, Becker and Schwarz when I got stuck on something. Not the best of explanations of things but very comprehensive so very useful.

That’s all I used – there are a few others out there I’ve not touched. Maybe they’d also have been good but these ones (especially Becker, Becker and Schwarz, Johnson and Kaku) have done me pretty well, I’d say.

Notes from the editor

[1] I don’t actually remember this happening and have my deep suspicious about whether it ever did.

2. There are a few other books on the market that Jo didn’t use. Perhaps the most notable one is the text by Kiritsis, String Theory in a Nutshell (see also the arXiv version). For a longer list, though without commentary, one can check out the String Wiki.

3. Special thanks to Jo for his contribution. Following this year Jo will be teaching physics at a secondary school. His future students would do well to ask him questions about D-branes.

I received the following promotional image in my e-mail today, and couldn’t help but share:

As part of `Brit Week‘ celebrations (commemorating 50 years of the British Consul General’s residence in Los Angeles) the British American Business Council has arranged a celebration of British culture in LA during the upcoming Los Angeles Galaxy footba… er, soccer match. The Galaxy, of course, are English football legend David Beckham’s current team [1]. For those in Los Angeles, here’s the blurb:

Come celebrate British Culture here in Los Angeles with a Showbiz Soccer game, live music by UK bands (the Delta Fiasco & i94), Grammy winner Steve Smith of Dirty Vegas spinning records, British Food and Drink, and a Major League game of Soccer between the Los Angeles Galaxy and the New York Red Bulls.

The event is this Saturday, 10 May (or “May 10″ for Americans). Gates open at 4pm with the celebrity match and celebrations leading up to the 7:30pm Galaxy match. Tickets start at $35… that’s half the price of a ticket for a Laker playoff game.

This event almost makes me wish I were back home so I could get a head start on missing being in the UK.

Notes

[1] Because it was in part due to the of the generosity of the Los Angeles British Consulate that I’ve had the opportunity to spend time inthe UK, I’ve held my tongue about Beckham’s attempt to popularise American soccer. I will, however, permit you to let your imagination run wild with all sorts of witty commentary.

Today’s snarky epiphany, while thesis-writing in the office:

It was rather warm in the office even though the heater was turned down and the window was a bit open. After a brief conversation with my officemate, Luis, we decided that the heat came from the eight computers in the room.

All this time I had assumed that the department provided lots of high-performance computers to its PhD students out of generosity. However, I now realise that the primary purpose of workstations is to provide computational power when large programs are distributed over the entire network (grid computing). That PhD students get to use them during the day is a perk, but not a raison d’être.

As I opened the window up a bit more, I realised that one can take this a step further and conjecture that not only are the computers not there to serve the PhD students, but in fact, it is the PhD students who are there to serve the computers by acting as biological feedback systems to maintain a reasonable room temperature, thus preventing CPU overheating.

If that doesn’t bring up images of Keanu Reeves in a sac of amniotic fluid with wires sticking out of his brain… then good for you, because I’ve been trying to get that image out of my head for the past ten minutes.

Update: David points out that the desktops aren’t used for the grid (yet). On that note, I’m always surprised by who happens to be reading this blog.

Update: My officemate, Dave, also notes that during the winter he wrote a script to run infinite do-loops on each of the office’s computers. The results of this attempt to warm up the room were inconclusive, but the attempt deserves applause.

I don’t usually do this. A native Los Angelino is too chill to ask for autographs, even from physicists [1]. However, when John Ellis came to Durham this week to give the 2008 Rochester Lecture, I couldn’t resist asking him to sign a copy of the original paper that introduced `penguin diagram’ into physics nomenclature. (Nucl. Phys. B131 (1977) 285) Prof. Ellis even drew a little penguin diagram!

I’ve spent most of this year calculating various penguin diagrams and including snarky penguin references in my conference talks [2], so it behooved me to get an autographed piece of penguin history. A nice etymology of the penguin diagram is available on the arXiv.

Notes

[1] Even though I don’t generally solicit autographs from faculty, I still get really excited to talk to movers-and-shakers in my field. (I suppose this can look unprofessional, so I try to hide it a little.) This made grad school visits really fun.

[2] There’s a Marshall sendoff event in London in a couple of weeks where a few of the scholarship recipients are selected to present their research. I submitted a facetious talk title along the lines of “quantum penguins and the nature of antimatter” and was very amused that they decided to let me talk.

One of the most eagerly awaited events of the Part III Return Conference a couple of weeks ago was the chance to revive old rivalies on the CMS foosball table. I’ll cut to the results from the first night:

Durham defeats Cambridge: 2-0

Thats right, Durham’s Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology dismantled the Cambridge Dept. of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics on their home turf. [I wonder if somewhere out there there's an institute director who is quietly beaming?]

Durham was represented by Jon C. (Multiloop techniques in QCD) and yours truly (SUSY B-physics), while Cambridge fielded two of its best: Mathieu E. (SUSY gauge theories) and Sven K. (ISS in large volume scenarios). It was truly an underdog victory, Mathieu and Sven are at the top of the unofficial CMS league table while Jon and I had never actually played together until those two wins.

Team French-speakers (Mathieu and Cyril) take on Sven’s team as Mars looks on.

It seems like last year’s `Cologne style’ of blind, forceful kicks have given way to Mathieu’s `Parisian style.’ The latter involves stopping the ball at the strikers, then going fo a quick lateral tap and kicking the ball into the goal in a quick single motion with lightning-fast precision. They’ve even imported table footballs from France which are a bit slower and permit more `technical’ play. [1]

Other Results

Team London (John D. and Dave T.), right, celebrates their impending 2-10 loss as Alex, Stephen Hawking’s student, looks on.

In other foosball results, Mars played his second game (having only joined us once last year) and got his first win (with an all-Oxford team, perhaps). My officemate Luis and I lost against another permutation of Cambridge players. Team Ireland, composed of Matt and Evan, was vastly improved from last year (when Team USA defeated them 10-nil). Team Cambridge defeated Team London (Imperial + Queen Mary) 10-2, but the London team did double their expected point total. Unfortunately I’ve forgotten the other results but they involved Olga (who organised the conference) returning from semi-retirement and a few games where James couldn’t stop laughing. We had one DNP–injury; Steffen wasn’t able to play due to illness.

History

The first table football games began after Michaelmas term in 2006 when Sven and I decided to take a break from studying in the CMS library. It became a staple of our evening study sessions during Easter term, with our study group taking the obligatory 10pm foosball break. Many of our friends would come to the CMS in the evening just to join us for the recreational part of our study session. In those days some the fiercest pairs were Team USA (Jon B. and Flip), Team Germany (Sven and Steffen), and Team Holland (Leo + anyone). For the past year Steffen has been keeping a log of CMS theoretical physics foosball games, but Sven argues that his best performances occur when Steffen isn’t there to record them.

From 2007: Team Ireland (left, Evan and Matt) about to be swept by Team Germany (Sven, Steffen).

Lesson:

I’m probably obligated to include a pithy lesson in here… something about how doing physics involves being part of a community, or maybe about being able to collaborate with other physicists. These are noble things to mention, but I think I’ll stick with, “Nyah-nyah!! We beat you on your home-turf!! We are the champions! Durham is #1!“

Footnote

[1] I should note that the original table footballs we used last year were imported from the US (I couldn’t find any in Cambridge). They were a bit harder and faster. The tables in Ustinov and Josephine Butler colleges at Durham are simliar to this and so Jon and I have a slightly different skillset from the Cambridge group. This ended up being good training for some effectiveness against the Parisian offense. And that, Mathieu and Sven, is how we beat you. It wasn’t because you had too much wine at dinner… (anyway, that excuse doesn’t work since I was sitting next to James and was the victim of many collateral-refills)

I’ve been buried in writing for a while now, but this week there’s a lot of buzz about the Ogden Centre celebrating its fifth birthday. Here’s the blurb from the IPPP news page:

A little over five years ago, the Prime Minister inaugurated the Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics at Durham University. The Ogden Centre hosts two world leading research groups, the Institute for Computational Cosmology and the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology. The work of these groups lies right at the cutting edge of  basic physics research, addressing key questions about the Universe, from  the perspectives of very large and very small scales.

The Ogden Centre has been a tremendous success, providing an exciting and stimulating environment in which researchers from all over the world can attack the most fundamental questions about the Universe.

To mark five years of the Ogden Centre, we are planning a series of special events, which will take place on Wednesday 30 April 2008.  In the afternoon, speakers from the IPPP and ICC will address ‘The Universe: Five Key Questions’. The Ogden Centre’s 5th Anniversary Celebration Dinner later that evening will include an address by Lord Rees of Ludlow, the President of the Royal Society.

The centre really is a special place and plays a big role in connecting the UK’s particle theorist and experimentalists, and I’ve been very fortunate to have been a part of it for the past year. (Yes … it’s getting close to the time to say goodbye!)

In an unrelated event adding to the celebrations of the week, this Thursday John Ellis will be giving his talk “Gaugin’s questions in particle physics” for Durham’s 2008 Rochester Lecture. He gave this talk at the EPS HEP meeting last summer, and some of you might recall that I pointed out that before Professor Ellis I’d previously used Gaugin’s famous Tahitian painting `Who are we…‘ as an allegory to physics.  (I used the painting in a graphic for the RS1 model.)

Finally, a snapshot from last Saturday evening by the Durham cathedral:

The license plate reads: HI2 GGS. Does this mean Higgs doublet? Two higgs doublet model? Is this Peter Higgs’ car? It should be. Photo courtesy of my flatmate’s mobile phone… thanks Jon.

According to the Daily Mail, a pack of black squirrels have invaded Cambridgeshire. This is especially amusing for me because black squirrels are a favourite curiosity among students at Stanford. It appears the little guys have followed me to the UK.

The Daily Mail article calls the black squirrels a “mutation” of the grey squirrel that causes an overproduction of black pigment. The article does its best to conjure up images of Tokein’s evil ‘mutant’ Uruk-hai orcs, claiming that the squirrels appear to be more aggresive, but the main point is that they’re different phenotypes of the same species of squirrel. (”It doesn’t matter if you’re black or grey.”) This has to have a life lesson somehwhere in it.

… of course, the squirrels’ hijinks were well documented back in Stanford.

Anyway, I should probably note that the grey squirrels themselves are a North American export that made it to the UK in the 19th century. (”An American Grey Squirrel in England?”) Apparently they have been a threat to the native red squirrel because the American squirrels are ravenous eaters and out-breed the British squirrels. This, also, has to have a life lesson somewhere in it.

Finally, if the black squirrels are indeed another animal invasion to the UK, they won’t be the only ones of recent times.

Update: My officemate Dave tells me that American Grey squirrels are also carriers of squirrel pox. While the greys have developed an immunity, the red squirrels are particularly susceptible.

Recently I activated my e-mail account for my PhD institution. This was a cause for minor celebration (while writing up one finds excuses for many minor celebrations). You hence can imagine that I was ready to put my fiesta-hat on when I received my first e-mail at this new account.

Unfortunately, this was the first line of the inaugural e-mail:

Crime alert: Incidents of stalking reported

I don’t have much experiences with conference-going yet, but with that caveat I must say that the 5th Part III Return Conference at Cambridge the past few days has been a perfect little conference.

One of the most precious and underappreciated resources of the Part III is the large community of clever and excited students it brings together. Even though the most of each year’s 200 Part III students do their PhDs elsewhere around the globe, their academic paths have a tendency to cross (no doubt being similarly aligned). It is with this in mind that the Return Conferences were born to encourage recent graduates to maintain the academic and personal connections made during the Part III.

Olga, our organiser, opening the conference.

This year’s theoretical physics (HEP, GR, astro/cosmo) conference was professionally organised by Olga, a local DAMTP student. Also playing roles as advisors (and sources of encouragement) were Dr. M. Batchelor and Dr. M. Wingate. I cannot compliment Olga enough for her job planning and executing both the official and unofficial programmes: everything from accomodation to talks to recreation went very smoothly.

I am thoroughly impressed at the progress my colleages have made in diverse subfields. Talks spanned a range of topics (my apologies in advance for inaccuracies):

• Mathematical physics: Mirror symmetry, Deformations of Lie Algebras (Cancelled due to illness. Feel better, Steffen!)
• String theory: background geometry (spin structure), string phenomenology (ISS and large-volume scenarios), AdS/CFT, brane-tilings (er… I think that’s what it was about…)
• Phenomenology: metastable SUSY breaking, heat kernel methods in SUSY, B-physics, Fermi gases
• Astrophysics: Planetary formation, pulsar frontiers
• Finance: What mathematicians do when they’re hired by hedge funds

That last talk was and especially memorable talk at the end of the conference programme. (I’m trying to convince James to write up the talk as a guest-post to this blog.)

Let me quantify what I mean by this being a `perfect little conference:’

1. Old and new friends. Conferences encourage the human aspect of science. The return conference was especially nice because we were a group of friends playing the role of potential collaborators and academic colleagues. I am a bit embarassed to have also spoken to a few of these colleagues for the first time after never properly meeting last year — but it’s nice to leave the conference with more friends than when one arrived.
2. Building our academic community. What I mean by the `human aspect of science’ is the idea that new ideas are generated through collaboration. The Return Conference was a reminder that we already have a broad academic network to tap.
3. Exploring the boundaries. As mentioned above, a range of HEP/Astro/GR topics were covered. This gave us all a chance to find out what kind of related research is going on in fields that are slightly more formal or experimental than our own. One cannot understate the importance of this kind of interaction: many new ideas in science are generated at the boundaries between adjacent disciplines.
4. A chance to ask questions. This was a rare opportunity to have a lineup of astrophysicists, phenomenologists, string theorists, and borderline mathematicians to ask the “stupid questions” that one might be embarassed to ask a faculty member. Since everyone shared a common background, you could expect to get answers pitched at the right level.
5. Reminder of why we love physics. Probably the most salient aspect of the 3-day event was that it reminded me of why I do physics: because it’s fun. We had a great time discussing whatever topics we thought were interesting—mostly physics sprinkled with a bit of gossip about those that couldn’t make it :-). I don’t remember the last time I found myself laughing out loud at a joke that ended with, “A section of the square root of a principle fibre bundle!”

In the near future I’ll put up a few other tidbits from the conference. I’d like to especially thank Olga and the local organising group, Steffen for hosting me, and everyone for making it such a lively event. A bit of a teaser: the powers-that-be are already working on a `big’ Part III Return conference next year. This event will invite back the last five Part III classes over the range of pure and applied mathematics. (I’m already looking for ways to fund my way back from the US!)

I’ll be taking a break from MSc. thesis-writing to attend the Fifth Cambridge Return Conference 2008: Theoretical Physics. If anyone is around Cambridge this week, I’ll be giving a talk (”WTF is a B Physics: A talk for string theorists.” [sic]) on Thursday morning at 11am in MR9 of the CMS.

I’ll post my slides when I get back. Meanwhile, here’s a teaser featuring some of the people I’m looking forward to seeing again—roughly plotted by the energy scale that they study (units of GeV).