User talk:Sparkyscience/Archives/2016/October

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Copyright
We appear to have an issue. Much of the text from this edit has been previously published:

All of this is from. Look at the paper it does not appear to be under an open license as published before 2011 I guess the last hope is that you are the author of that piece. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:41, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * "There is a long history surrounding the question whether the zero point fluctuations of quantized fields are “real"
 * "Schwinger, in particular, attempted to formulate QED without reference to zero-point fluctuations"
 * "Such a derivation was first given by Schwinger (1975) for a scalar field, and then generalized to the electromagnetic case by Schwinger, DeRaad, and Milton"
 * "the concept of zero-point fluctuations is a heuristic and calculational aid in the description of the Casimir effect, but not a necessity"
 * "no one has shown that source theory or another S-matrix based approach can provide a complete description of QED to all orders"
 * " In QCD, confinement would seem to present an insuperable challenge to an S-matrix based approach, since quarks and gluons do not appear in the physical S-matrix."
 * "Even if one could argue away zero-point contributions to the quantum vacuum energy, the problem of spontaneous symmetry breaking remains: condensates (ground state vacua) that carry energy appear at many energy scales in the Standard Model. So there is good reason to be skeptical of attempts to avoid the standard formulation of quantum field theory and the zero-point energies it brings with it"


 * thanks Jaffe (2005) was referenced and quoted in the section of text beforehand but I agree it was not clear (and may of been in the grey area of copyright!). I have made the quotations clearer and redrafted elsewhere. Due you believe the current edit to be acceptable or does it require more work? I'm currently making quite a lot of changes to the article to bring it up to standard so any other passing comments or advice are appreciatedSparkyscience (talk) 12:17, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Everything you add needs to be fully paraphrased here. That was not paraphrased enough. If other stuff has not been sufficiently paraphrased please also do that. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 17:41, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * "That was not paraphrased enough." to be clear are you refering to previous flagged version or current version of the page?
 * Sorry the previous version was not paraphrased enough :-) Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 19:02, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Zero point energy misleading blather
Hi, I am not going to go through serial reverts on your zero point energy edit reversions, etc... in the Quantum field theory article. Had you proposed it in the talk page, you would have had other editors indicate why it is limited, misguided and virtually misleading---with a kernel of truth, only if properly interpreted, which would generate more problems and potential misconceptions than it should. Frankly, the insert looks, as it stands, as a handle to steer the reader to the ZPE page and somehow imagine the ZPE features as the true essence of renormalization, which would be a very unfortunate misconception, indeed. Pauli (cited) wrote these words before the late 40s appreciation and resolution of the problem: he certainly does not mention loops! The zero-point energy divergences were observed by Jordan in 1926 and are, by far, not the serious part of the problem: having packaged an infinity of oscillators in quantum fields, he notes the zero-point energies of these oscillators add up to an infinite constant. He most emphatically does not address virtual particles. The essence of both the divergence quandary, and its resolution by Bethe, Schwinger, Feynman, & Tomonaga, not to mention Dyson, is the pileup of virtual states (in loops) at an infinity of scales, to produce real contributions needing delicate accounting in the computation of physical answers. (But, really, the phenomenon had to wait until the 1970s for Wilson to come along and demonstrate that it was not a cheat but, instead, the essence of multi-scale nature---yet another glaring and ultimately misleading lacuna of the QFT article.)

I'll let it stand, in acquiescent tolerance of WP erosion; but be advised  that a cursory understanding of the renormalization group would simply illustrate how infinities crop up at all scales and processes, and are not just a daft  zero-point energy phenomenon, easy to dismiss; and, sooner or later, a better informed editor will revert it, after the "what" and "huh?" templates start popping up. I get dozens of irate complaints about WP suboptimalities at the PE site, and am now witnessing how the misconception mayhem starts. The Talk page is the proper forum to discuss these matters. I'm dropping QFT off my watchlist. Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 22:06, 21 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you and sorry it has taken some time to get back to you. I have added points about Jordan (1926) to the history section of ZPE page as it was a good new point that I had not come across. I have been redrafting the ZPE page over the last few weeks or so and I'm trying to bring the conversation of the topic up to par - any observations or advice on this is (sometimes colourful) topic is welcome (though do try and avoid being condescending if you can help it!). With respect to QFT edit, I'm sure you'd agree that the "emergence of infinities" section is poorly referenced (as is the dedicated history article) with scant explanation as to the types of divergences that renormalisation deals with (i.e ZPE, ultraviolet, infared ect.), when they cropped up historically, what they are and how they are dealt with effectively. The average reader gains no intuitive understanding of the issues at play. While ultraviolet divergences are the most serious divergence, i would be wary of dismissing ZPE as mearly a "constant" that can be taken care of by Wick ordering, never to reemerge as a problem again - it reappears if we want to solve Heisenberg equation for a field operator and it is essential when preserving the canonical commutators leading the formal consistent of QED. (As you may know!) an attempt to deal with ZPE effectively came in 1928 with Jordan and Pauli publishing what has been called "the first infinite subtraction, or renormalisation, in quantum field theory" I had hoped that the small edit would lead to a cascade of helpful edits from more knowledgable people building on the comment, clarifying and expanding, rather reverting the QFT article back a state of unsatisfactory inertia. The edit was not factually wrong, merely "limited" as you state. The point can be made that issues that crop up related to ZPE, vacuum fluctuations, virtual particles (and thus Feymann's "loops") as a consequence of the uncertainty principle can be viewed in essence as all the same issue. Though admittedly this is a different, somewhat philosophical, point that does not deal with the "history" of QFT. Something for the talk page as you have stated...Sparkyscience (talk) 13:22, 25 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes. I am actually not that focussed on the history of the subject, and proper discussion like this should be suitable for that talk page, perhaps, and not here, a discussion that I'd likely sit out, to be sure. Apologies for the implied condescension---it was but alarm. We evidently disagree on the primacy of the ZPE  and the significance of your  "the first infinite subtraction, or renormalisation, in quantum field theory", but then again, i am limited by my lack of interest in the subject of "first but not significant". Significant in breaking a logjam (the crisis elicited by the Lamb shift and really irrelevant to the ZPE) and permitting progress, essentially opening a new page in the intellectual history of the 20th century.  Referencewise, one could do worse than rely on Schweber's and Pais's op.cits.


 * In any case, on a much broader subject, looking at that article, QFT, it is almost comically flawed in its archaic focus on the late 40s with its somewhat dated mumbo-jumbo-creative-accounting on infinities, and giving pitifully short shrift to the RG. A modern worker on QFT cannot but roll her/his eyes at it. The current view, in a saga more significant and superior in subtlety to that of the late 40s, hews to the 70s picture of Wilson, Fischer, and Kadanoff, who, at last, understood why the creative accounting of infinity cancellation worked in the first place, and what it meant for the infinities to arise out of finite contributions of an infinity of interacting scales... the grand vision of the RG dominant today. Before you hasten to invite my input, no, I'd lack the time to handle that adequately, now; but it would be a worthy project to anyone interested in fixing that page... it really needs fixing....  Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 13:38, 25 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I'd be careful about saying that the Lamb Shift has "nothing" to do with ZPE...Schwinger, in particular, attempted to formulate QED without reference to zero-point vacuum fluctuations via his "source theory". Normal (Wick) ordering leads to the interpretation of the Lamb Shift in terms of the source field, whereas symmetric ordering of the field operators leads just as naturally to the interpretation in terms of fluctuating zero-point energy. Weisskopf and Welton being advocates of the later. The interpretation of the Lamb shift and whether it is due in part to ZPE is largely a matter of taste, underlying your choice of philosophy is an arbitrary choice of ordering the field operators. The same can be said of the Casimir effect (indeed nearly all evidence attributed to the reality of ZPE!) As a personal point of view, I would argue the "undeniably" of the supposed reality of contributions from ground state condensates only becomes apparent when dealing with nonlinearity and symmetry breaking esp. in QCD etc. Would recommend reading this paper and Milonni's (excellent) book to get basic idea of debate. With respect to referencing I'm sure I read Feynman say something to that effect but I shall have to find it! Sparkyscience (talk) 16:14, 25 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, Feynman did, indeed, give the problem as a challenge in Solvay, 1961, and E A Power huffed and puffed and did the Bethe noncovariant calculation to get the logarithmic Lamb shift out of the zero point energy, Am J Phys (1966) 34 516. This is classic RPF (as I knew him): He tells you how to climb a tree in flipflops, only so you see how his method is superior and you cry "uncle"! It is obvious that the Feynman diagram is superior, and that nobody at Shelter Island would have been impressed or advanced renormalization theory this way. But, yes, a dog can stand on its hind legs. In any case, I tweaked the QFT article to steer it away from the former positively weird impression that QFT is some sort of a musty mausoleum to Shelter Island. QFT did have a golden age, in the 70s. A student taught QFT today would wonder if they were in the right article if they read the former versions. I gather they'd keep on reading now....   Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 19:35, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

October 2016
Your addition to Zero-point energy has been removed, as it appears to have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images&mdash;you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. ''This is your final warning. Further copyright violations will result in you being blocked from editing. '' — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 23:36, 31 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi Diannaa, I feel this is a little harsh for a final warning? The edit was a well-intentioned contribution, not one of the four sentences were copied verbatim and the original material was clearly referenced. As i'm sure you appreciate the level of paraphrasing required by copywrite law can be highly subjective. I do understand the need for Wikipedia not to take chances in this area and will ensure further revisions are more distinct. I hope the redraft for the removed section of text is now okay?