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Physics fields

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 16:58:44 2021 No.12750070 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>12750736 >>12750759 >>12750875 >>12751222

Which physics fields are worth staying in academia for?
Am about to finish undergrad and have a hard time specializing myself due to interest in pretty much everything.
Biggest problems arise from the fact particle physics is a meme, and the feel that picking a theoretical specialization will end in me becoming a homeless person, no matter if i succeed or not.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 17:08:19 No.12750112 Report

Quoted By: >>12750759

high energy particle physics (e.g. CERN) is a meme
particle physics isn't (i.e. Spallation Neutron Source)
electrical engineering has open arms and welcomes all physicists

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 19:50:27 No.12750712 Report

Quoted By:

bump

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 19:56:32 No.12750736 Report

Quoted By:

>>12750070
none unless you want to add up in education or doing research that make you feel useless, men choose engineering and create the wonders you awed upon as a kid

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 20:00:29 No.12750759 Report

Quoted By: >>12750855

>>12750070
I'm not a physicist proper, but I've been working on the physics side of stuff coming in from math/CS via quantum information theory (yes, the stuff that's used in quantum computing theory but isn't necessarily about quantum computing) and I have a couple of papers / research threads on the physics side. My impression is that condensed matter physicists generally have their hands full with problems that are both theoretically and practically interesting, and you work a lot with both the purely academic side and the engineering side of things. I generally think people who do statistical mechanics have their hands full with both heavy theory and heavy application depending on where they want their career to go.

Like >>12750112 said, there's always a lot of physics work to be done on the engineering, so that's always an option.
My work in math and CS is relevant in material science and in some areas of physics, so I'm a bit biased though.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 20:19:59 No.12750855 Report

Quoted By: >>12751082 >>12751104

>>12750759
Do you have some example topics related to statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics maybe? Every condensed matter group at my uni researches superconductors one way or another and it honestly feels like a huge pop-sci trap to me.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 20:22:37 No.12750875 Report

Quoted By:

>>12750070
Probably teaching, but janitors get paid better.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 21:12:31 No.12751082 Report

Quoted By: >>12751104

>>12750855
Stuff I know about is Kitaev's work, which touches stuff having to do with superconductors. Then there are some interesting problems to do with crystralline semiconductors, solid state physics, and topology in materials these days. The thing with CMP, as far as I can tell, is that theory work and experimental work have very heavy interaction, so there's a great inbetween doing both academic and practical work. As for stat mech, I mean the sky is the limit here. You can work on doing the classification of Hamiltonian based on how hard it is to estimate ground states (this is something both physicists and computer scientists are working on, called "Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity" and if you want to find more on it, look up Hastings and the Area Law in 1D), doing pure mathematics, etc etc.. Stat mech is one of the richest physical theories we have out there.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 21:17:49 No.12751104 Report

Quoted By: >>12751180

>>12750855
>>12751082
Sorry, I should add that quantum hamiltonian complexity isn't quite stat mech, but a decent amount of the problems are relevant in problems in statistical mechanics. I should mention that stat mech groups study everything from computational physics (which as suspicious as it sounds, is actually a really fucking cool field of physics that's somewhere between theory and experiment. It's a relatively new development and leads to interesting progress on all fronts), studying nonequilibrium dynamical systems like fluids or even biological tissue, nanostructures, and hell even neural nets and learning theory.

A more-than-decent amount of physics theory and methods show up in learning theory and computer science. Namely, a LOT of mean field methods have shown up in learning problems, to the point where there are books about it
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/advanced-mean-field-methods

Also, if you want to learn about hamiltonian complexity, here's a primer
https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.3916

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 21:33:03 No.12751180 Report

Quoted By: >>12752249

>>12751104
We do have quite a big computational physics department so i guess I'll take a look at what they're doing then. Thanks for your help mate

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 21:42:53 No.12751222 Report

Quoted By:

>>12750070
Its all about semiconductors, material science and chemistry.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 24 Feb 2021 23:54:38 No.12751695 Report

Quoted By:

bump

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 25 Feb 2021 03:02:23 No.12752249 Report

Quoted By:

>>12751180
cool

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