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Article #4439Re: Solid-state doesn't use QED! (Was Re: Particle Research)
From: Matt Austern
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1992 22:55
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1992 22:55
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In article <23767@galaxy.ucr.edu> baez@ucrmath.ucr.edu (john baez) writes: > In solid state you have > quite a bit of choice in terms of finding systems that have roughly some > Lagrangian or other, so you can really test your mathematical notions to > some extent. (Typically, of course, the real condensed matter system is > more complicated than the Lagrangian you guessed for it, so these "tests" > are always suspect.) Oh, but that's the whole point of a renormalization group analysis, right? You just show your Lagrangian includes all of the relevant parameters. In a sense, I think that the renormalization group justifies, in retrospect, a lot of what physicists have done for over a century: modeling a very complicated system by a simple mathematical description. -- Matthew Austern Just keep yelling until you attract a (510) 644-2618 crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a austern@lbl.bitnet faction, an army! If you don't have any matt@physics.berkeley.edu solutions, become a part of the problem!
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!haven.umd.edu!darwin.sura.net!spool.mu.edu!agate!agate!matt From: matt@physics16.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern) Newsgroups: sci.physics Subject: Re: Solid-state doesn't use QED! (Was Re: Particle Research) Date: 8 Nov 92 22:55:53 Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group) Lines: 22 Message-ID: <MATT.92Nov8225553@physics16.berkeley.edu> References: <BxA2GC.6yE@wsrcc.com> <1992Nov6.233219.15750@galois.mit.edu> <1992Nov7.034453.2080@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <23767@galaxy.ucr.edu> Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: physics16.berkeley.edu In-reply-to: baez@ucrmath.ucr.edu's message of 8 Nov 92 23:20:21 GMT