See as well "The Thing and I."
Wednesday, October 4, 2023
Thursday, April 21, 2022
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Physics for Poets
Excerpt from a long poem by Eliza Griswold —
The square array above does not contain Arfken's variant
labels for ρ1, ρ2, and ρ3, although those variant labels were
included in Arfken's 1985 square array and in Arfken's 1985
list of six anticommuting sets, copied at MathWorld as above.
The omission of variant labels prevents a revised list of the
six anticommuting sets from containing more distinct symbols
than there are matrices.
Revised list of anticommuting sets:
α1 α2 α3 ρ2 ρ3
γ1 γ2 γ3 ρ1 ρ3
δ1 δ2 δ3 ρ1 ρ2
α1 γ1 δ1 σ2 σ3
α2 γ2 δ2 σ1 σ3
α3 γ3 δ3 σ1 σ2 .
Context for the poem: Quark Rock.
Context for the physics: Dirac Matrices.
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Friday, September 11, 2020
In Memoriam
|
From the Vanderbilt University obituary of Vaughan F. R. Jones —
"During the mid-1980s, while Jones was working on a problem in von Neumann algebra theory, which is related to the foundations of quantum mechanics, he discovered an unexpected link between that theory and knot theory, a mathematical field dating back to the 19th century. Specifically, he found a new mathematical expression—now known as the Jones polynomial—for distinguishing between different types of knots as well as links in three-dimensional space. Jones’ discovery had been missed by topologists during the previous 60 years, and his finding contributed to his selection as a Fields Medalist.
'Now there is an area of mathematics called said Dietmar Bisch, professor of mathematics." [Link added.] |
Related to Jones's work —
"Topological Quantum Information Theory" at
the website of Louis H. Kauffman —
http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/Quanta.pdf.
Kauffman —
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Monday, October 21, 2019
Algebra and Space… Illustrated.
Related entertainment —
Detail:
George Steiner —
"Perhaps an insane conceit."
Perhaps.
See Quantum Tesseract Theorem .
Perhaps Not.
See Dirac and Geometry .
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Wednesday, October 9, 2019
The Joy of Six
Note that in the pictures below of the 15 two-subsets of a six-set,
the symbols 1 through 6 in Hudson's square array of 1905 occupy the
same positions as the anticommuting Dirac matrices in Arfken's 1985
square array. Similarly occupying these positions are the skew lines
within a generalized quadrangle (a line complex) inside PG(3,2).
Related narrative — The "Quantum Tesseract Theorem."
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Friday, September 27, 2019
The Black List
"… Max Black, the Cornell philosopher, and others have pointed out
how 'perhaps every science must start with metaphor and end with
algebra, and perhaps without the metaphor there would never have
been any algebra' …."
— Max Black, Models and Metaphors, Cornell U. Press, 1962,
page 242, as quoted in Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, by
Victor Witter Turner, Cornell U. Press, paperback, 1975, page 25
Metaphor —
Algebra —
|
The 16 Dirac matrices form six anticommuting sets of five matrices each (Arfken 1985, p. 214):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. SEE ALSO: Pauli Matrices REFERENCES: Arfken, G. Mathematical Methods for Physicists, 3rd ed. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, pp. 211-217, 1985. Berestetskii, V. B.; Lifshitz, E. M.; and Pitaevskii, L. P. "Algebra of Dirac Matrices." §22 in Quantum Electrodynamics, 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Pergamon Press, pp. 80-84, 1982. Bethe, H. A. and Salpeter, E. Quantum Mechanics of One- and Two-Electron Atoms. New York: Plenum, pp. 47-48, 1977. Bjorken, J. D. and Drell, S. D. Relativistic Quantum Mechanics. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. Dirac, P. A. M. Principles of Quantum Mechanics, 4th ed. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1982. Goldstein, H. Classical Mechanics, 2nd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, p. 580, 1980. Good, R. H. Jr. "Properties of Dirac Matrices." Rev. Mod. Phys. 27, 187-211, 1955. Referenced on Wolfram|Alpha: Dirac Matrices CITE THIS AS: Weisstein, Eric W. "Dirac Matrices."
From MathWorld— A Wolfram Web Resource. |
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Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,
The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of red and blue, the hard sound—
Steel against intimation—the sharp flash,
The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.
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Friday, August 16, 2019
Nocciolo
A revision of the above diagram showing
the Galois-addition-table structure —
Related tables from August 10 —
See "Schoolgirl Space Revisited."
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Saturday, August 10, 2019
Schoolgirl Space* Revisited:
The Square "Inscape" Model of
the Generalized Quadrangle W(2)
Click image to enlarge.
-embedding-in-PG(3,2)-Planat-Saniga-1000w.jpg)
* The title refers to the role of PG (3,2) in Kirkman's schoolgirl problem.
For some backstory, see my post Anticommuting Dirac Matrices as Skew Lines
and, more generally, posts tagged Dirac and Geometry.
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Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Schoolgirl Space for Quantum Mystics
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Sunday, July 14, 2019
Old Pathways in Science:
The Quantum Tesseract Theorem Revisited
"The secret is that the super-mathematician expresses by the anticommutation
of his operators the property which the geometer conceives as perpendicularity
of displacements. That is why on p. 269 we singled out a pentad of anticommuting
operators, foreseeing that they would have an immediate application in describing
the property of perpendicular directions without using the traditional picture of space.
They express the property of perpendicularity without the picture of perpendicularity.
Thus far we have touched only the fringe of the structure of our set of sixteen E-operators.
Only by entering deeply into the theory of electrons could I show the whole structure
coming into evidence."
A related illustration, from posts tagged Dirac and Geometry —
Compare and contrast Eddington's use of the word "perpendicular"
with a later use of the word by Saniga and Planat.
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Saturday, December 22, 2018
Cremona-Richmond
The following are some notes on the history of Clifford algebras
and finite geometry suggested by the "Clifford Modules" link in a
Log24 post of March 12, 2005 —
A more recent appearance of the configuration —
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Wednesday, December 12, 2018
An Inscape for Douthat
Some images, and a definition, suggested by my remarks here last night
on Apollo and Ross Douthat's remarks today on "The Return of Paganism" —
In finite geometry and combinatorics,
an inscape is a 4×4 array of square figures,
each figure picturing a subset of the overall 4×4 array:
Related material — the phrase
"Quantum Tesseract Theorem" and …
A. An image from the recent
film "A Wrinkle in Time" —
B. A quote from the 1962 book —
"There's something phoney
in the whole setup, Meg thought.
There is definitely something rotten
in the state of Camazotz."
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Friday, December 7, 2018
The Angel Particle
(Continued from this morning)
"The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation."
— T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets
See also other Log24 posts tagged Kummerhenge.
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Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Blackboard Jungle Continues.
From the 1955 film "Blackboard Jungle" —
From a trailer for the recent film version of A Wrinkle in Time —
Detail of the phrase "quantum tesseract theorem":
From the 1962 book —
"There's something phoney
in the whole setup, Meg thought.
There is definitely something rotten
in the state of Camazotz."
Related mathematics from Koen Thas that some might call a
"quantum tesseract theorem" —
Some background —
See also posts tagged Dirac and Geometry. For more
background on finite geometry, see a web page
at Thas's institution, Ghent University.
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Thursday, June 21, 2018
Dirac and Geometry (continued)
"Just fancy a scale model of Being
made out of string and cardboard."
— Nanavira Thera, 1 October 1957,
on a model of Kummer's Quartic Surface
mentioned by Eddington
"… a treatise on Kummer's quartic surface."
The "super-mathematician" Eddington did not see fit to mention
the title or the author of the treatise he discussed.
See Hudson + Kummer in this journal.
See also posts tagged Dirac and Geometry.
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Monday, March 12, 2018
“Quantum Tesseract Theorem?”
Remarks related to a recent film and a not-so-recent film.
For some historical background, see Dirac and Geometry in this journal.
Also (as Thas mentions) after Saniga and Planat —
The Saniga-Planat paper was submitted on December 21, 2006.
Excerpts from this journal on that date —
"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."
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Tuesday, January 9, 2018
Koen Thas and Quantum Theory
This post supplies some background for earlier posts tagged
Quantum Tesseract Theorem.
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Monday, January 8, 2018
Raiders of the Lost Theorem
The Quantum Tesseract Theorem —
Raiders —
A Wrinkle in Time
starring Storm Reid,
Reese Witherspoon,
Oprah Winfrey &
Mindy Kaling
Time Magazine December 25, 2017 – January 1, 2018
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Saturday, December 23, 2017
The Right Stuff
A figure related to the general connecting theorem of Koen Thas —
See also posts tagged Dirac and Geometry in this journal.
Those who prefer narrative to mathematics may, if they so fancy, call
the above Thas connecting theorem a "quantum tesseract theorem ."
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The Patterning
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Friday, December 22, 2017
Thursday, December 21, 2017
Wrinkles
TIME magazine, issue of December 25th, 2017 —
" In 2003, Hand worked with Disney to produce a made-for-TV movie.
Thanks to budget constraints, among other issues, the adaptation
turned out bland and uninspiring. It disappointed audiences,
L’Engle and Hand. 'This is not the dream,' Hand recalls telling herself.
'I’m sure there were people at Disney that wished I would go away.' "
Not the dream? It was, however, the nightmare, presenting very well
the encounter in Camazotz of Charles Wallace with the Tempter.
From a trailer for the latest version —
Detail:
From the 1962 book —
"There's something phoney in the whole setup, Meg thought.
There is definitely something rotten in the state of Camazotz."
Song adapted from a 1960 musical —
"In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happy-ever-aftering
Than here in Camazotz!"
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Sunday, December 10, 2017
Geometry
See also Symplectic in this journal.
From Gotay and Isenberg, “The Symplectization of Science,”
Gazette des Mathématiciens 54, 59-79 (1992):
“… what is the origin of the unusual name ‘symplectic’? ….
Its mathematical usage is due to Hermann Weyl who,
in an effort to avoid a certain semantic confusion, renamed
the then obscure ‘line complex group’ the ‘symplectic group.’
… the adjective ‘symplectic’ means ‘plaited together’ or ‘woven.’
This is wonderfully apt….”
The above symplectic figure appears in remarks on
the diamond-theorem correlation in the webpage
Rosenhain and Göpel Tetrads in PG(3,2). See also
related remarks on the notion of linear (or line ) complex
in the finite projective space PG(3,2) —
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Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Another 35-Year Wait
The title refers to today's earlier post "The 35-Year Wait."
A check of my activities 35 years ago this fall, in the autumn
of 1982, yields a formula I prefer to the nonsensical, but famous,
"canonical formula" of Claude Lévi-Strauss.
My "inscape" formula, from a note of Sept. 22, 1982 —
S = f ( f ( X ) ) .
Some mathematics from last year related to the 1982 formula —
See also Inscape in this journal and posts tagged Dirac and Geometry.
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Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Jargon
See "sacerdotal jargon" in this journal.
For those who prefer scientific jargon —
"… open its reading to
combinational possibilities
outside its larger narrative flow.
The particulars of attention,
whether subjective or objective,
are unshackled through form,
and offered as a relational matrix …."
— Kent Johnson in a 1993 essay
For some science that is not just jargon, see …
and, also from posts tagged Dirac and Geometry …
The above line complex also illustrates an outer automorphism
of the symmetric group S6. See last Thursday's post "Rotman and
the Outer Automorphism."
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Friday, June 3, 2016
Bruins and van Dam
A review of some recent posts on Dirac and geometry,
each of which mentions the late physicist Hendrik van Dam:
- Kummer and Dirac (May 25)
- Framework (May 25)
- Expanding the Spielraum (May 26)
- Dorje (May 26)
The first of these posts mentions the work of E. M. Bruins.
Some earlier posts that cite Bruins:
- Anticommuting Dirac Matrices as Skew Lines (Nov. 20, 2015)
- Dirac and Line Geometry (Nov. 23, 2015)
- Einstein and Geometry (Nov. 27, 2015)
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Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Kummer and Dirac
From "Projective Geometry and PT-Symmetric Dirac Hamiltonian,"
Y. Jack Ng and H. van Dam,
Physics Letters B , Volume 673, Issue 3,
23 March 2009, Pages 237–239
(http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.2579v2, last revised Feb. 20, 2009)
" Studies of spin-½ theories in the framework of projective geometry
have been undertaken before. See, e.g., Ref. [4]. 1 "
" 1 These papers are rather mathematical and technical.
The authors of the first two papers discuss the Dirac equation
in terms of the Plucker-Klein correspondence between lines of
a three-dimensional projective space and points of a quadric
in a five-dimensional projective space. The last paper shows
that the Dirac equation bears a certain relation to Kummer’s
surface, viz., the structure of the Dirac ring of matrices is
related to that of Kummer’s 166 configuration . . . ."
[4]
O. Veblen
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA , 19 (1933), p. 503
Full Text via CrossRef
E.M. Bruins
Proc. Nederl. Akad. Wetensch. , 52 (1949), p. 1135
F.C. Taylor Jr., Master thesis, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill (1968), unpublished
A remark of my own on the structure of Kummer’s 166 configuration . . . .
See as well yesterday morning's post.
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Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Rosenhain and Göpel Revisited
The authors Taormina and Wendland in the previous post
discussed some mathematics they apparently did not know was
related to a classic 1905 book by R. W. H. T. Hudson, Kummer's
Quartic Surface .
"This famous book is a prototype for the possibility
of explaining and exploring a many-faceted topic of
research, without focussing on general definitions,
formal techniques, or even fancy machinery. In this
regard, the book still stands as a highly recommendable,
unparalleled introduction to Kummer surfaces, as a
permanent source of inspiration and, last but not least,
as an everlasting symbol of mathematical culture."
— Werner Kleinert, Mathematical Reviews ,
as quoted at Amazon.com
Some 4×4 diagrams from that book are highly relevant to the
discussion by Taormina and Wendland of the 4×4 squares within
the 1974 Miracle Octad Generator of R. T. Curtis that were later,
in 1987, described by Curtis as pictures of the vector 4-space over
the two-element Galois field GF(2).
Hudson did not think of his 4×4 diagrams as illustrating a vector space,
but he did use them to picture certain subsets of the 16 cells in each
diagram that he called Rosenhain and Göpel tetrads .
Some related work of my own (click images for related posts)—
Rosenhain tetrads as 20 of the 35 projective lines in PG(3,2)
Göpel tetrads as 15 of the 35 projective lines in PG(3,2)
Related terminology describing the Göpel tetrads above
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Monday, February 8, 2016
A Game with Four Letters
Related material — Posts tagged Dirac and Geometry.
For an example of what Eddington calls "an open mind,"
see the 1958 letters of Nanavira Thera.
(Among the "Early Letters" in Seeking the Path ).
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Monday, November 23, 2015
Dirac and Line Geometry
Some background for my post of Nov. 20,
"Anticommuting Dirac Matrices as Skew Lines" —
His earlier paper that Bruins refers to, "Line Geometry
and Quantum Mechanics," is available in a free PDF.
For a biography of Bruins translated by Google, click here.
For some additional historical background going back to
Eddington, see Gary W. Gibbons, "The Kummer
Configuration and the Geometry of Majorana Spinors,"
pages 39-52 in Oziewicz et al., eds., Spinors, Twistors,
Clifford Algebras, and Quantum Deformations:
Proceedings of the Second Max Born Symposium held
near Wrocław, Poland, September 1992 . (Springer, 2012,
originally published by Kluwer in 1993.)
For more-recent remarks on quantum geometry, see a
paper by Saniga cited in today's update to my Nov. 20 post.
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Friday, November 20, 2015
Anticommuting Dirac Matrices as Skew Lines
(Continued from November 13)
The work of Ron Shaw in this area, ca. 1994-1995, does not
display explicitly the correspondence between anticommutativity
in the set of Dirac matrices and skewness in a line complex of
PG(3,2), the projective 3-space over the 2-element Galois field.
Here is an explicit picture —
References:
Arfken, George B., Mathematical Methods for Physicists , Third Edition,
Academic Press, 1985, pages 213-214
Cullinane, Steven H., Notes on Groups and Geometry, 1978-1986
Shaw, Ron, "Finite Geometry, Dirac Groups, and the Table of
Real Clifford Algebras," undated article at ResearchGate.net
Update of November 23:
See my post of Nov. 23 on publications by E. M. Bruins
in 1949 and 1959 on Dirac matrices and line geometry,
and on another author who gives some historical background
going back to Eddington.
Some more-recent related material from the Slovak school of
finite geometry and quantum theory —
The matrices underlying the Saniga paper are those of Pauli, not
those of Dirac, but these two sorts of matrices are closely related.
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Friday, November 13, 2015
A Connection between the 16 Dirac Matrices and the Large Mathieu Group
Note that the six anticommuting sets of Dirac matrices listed by Arfken
correspond exactly to the six spreads in the above complex of 15 projective
lines of PG(3,2) fixed under a symplectic polarity (the diamond theorem
correlation ). As I noted in 1986, this correlation underlies the Miracle
Octad Generator of R. T. Curtis, hence also the large Mathieu group.
References:
Arfken, George B., Mathematical Methods for Physicists , Third Edition,
Academic Press, 1985, pages 213-214
Cullinane, Steven H., Notes on Groups and Geometry, 1978-1986
Related material:
The 6-set in my 1986 note above also appears in a 1996 paper on
the sixteen Dirac matrices by David M. Goodmanson —
Background reading:
Ron Shaw on finite geometry, Clifford algebras, and Dirac groups
(undated compilation of publications from roughly 1994-1995)—
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Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Algebra and Space
"Perhaps an insane conceit …." Perhaps.
Related remarks on algebra and space —
"The Quality Without a Name" (Log24, August 26, 2015).
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Saturday, April 13, 2013
Princeton’s Christopher Robin
The title is that of a talk (see video) given by
George Dyson at a Princeton land preservation trust,
reportedly on March 21, 2013. The talk's subtitle was
"Oswald Veblen and the Six-hundred-acre Woods."
Meanwhile…
Thursday, March 21, 2013
|
Related material for those who prefer narrative
to mathematics:
|
Log24 on June 6, 2006:
The Omen :
|
Related material for those who prefer mathematics
to narrative:
What the Omen narrative above and the mathematics of Veblen
have in common is the number 6. Veblen, who came to
Princeton in 1905 and later helped establish the Institute,
wrote extensively on projective geometry. As the British
geometer H. F. Baker pointed out, 6 is a rather important number
in that discipline. For the connection of 6 to the Göpel tetrads
figure above from March 21, see a note from May 1986.
See also last night's Veblen and Young in Light of Galois.
"There is such a thing as a tesseract." — Madeleine L'Engle
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Thursday, December 5, 2002
Thursday December 5, 2002
Sacerdotal Jargon
From the website
Abstracts and Preprints in Clifford Algebra [1996, Oct 8]:
Paper: clf-alg/good9601
From: David M. Goodmanson
Address: 2725 68th Avenue S.E., Mercer Island, Washington 98040
Title: A graphical representation of the Dirac Algebra
Abstract: The elements of the Dirac algebra are represented by sixteen 4×4 gamma matrices, each pair of which either commute or anticommute. This paper demonstrates a correspondence between the gamma matrices and the complete graph on six points, a correspondence that provides a visual picture of the structure of the Dirac algebra. The graph shows all commutation and anticommutation relations, and can be used to illustrate the structure of subalgebras and equivalence classes and the effect of similarity transformations….
Published: Am. J. Phys. 64, 870-880 (1996)
The following is a picture of K6, the complete graph on six points. It may be used to illustrate various concepts in finite geometry as well as the properties of Dirac matrices described above.
From
"The Relations between Poetry and Painting,"
by Wallace Stevens:
"The theory of poetry, that is to say, the total of the theories of poetry, often seems to become in time a mystical theology or, more simply, a mystique. The reason for this must by now be clear. The reason is the same reason why the pictures in a museum of modern art often seem to become in time a mystical aesthetic, a prodigious search of appearance, as if to find a way of saying and of establishing that all things, whether below or above appearance, are one and that it is only through reality, in which they are reflected or, it may be, joined together, that we can reach them. Under such stress, reality changes from substance to subtlety, a subtlety in which it was natural for Cézanne to say: 'I see planes bestriding each other and sometimes straight lines seem to me to fall' or 'Planes in color. . . . The colored area where shimmer the souls of the planes, in the blaze of the kindled prism, the meeting of planes in the sunlight.' The conversion of our Lumpenwelt went far beyond this. It was from the point of view of another subtlety that Klee could write: 'But he is one chosen that today comes near to the secret places where original law fosters all evolution. And what artist would not establish himself there where the organic center of all movement in time and space—which he calls the mind or heart of creation— determines every function.' Conceding that this sounds a bit like sacerdotal jargon, that is not too much to allow to those that have helped to create a new reality, a modern reality, since what has been created is nothing less."
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