Professor of Theoretical Cosmology at University of Amsterdam | Chee-Chun Leung Professor of Cosmology at National Taiwan University | Director of
@LeCosPA_NTU
Can't believe the book is finally done. I hope it will be a useful resource. In this 🧵 I will provide links to additional material (extra notes, color figures, Mathematica notebooks, etc.)
This year I have the privilege to teach General Relativity. I won’t have time to write my own lecture notes, but fortunately there is the excellent book by
@seanmcarroll
Finished the GR course. I really enjoyed it. Such a wonderful subject to teach. My lecture notes can be found here: Hardly anything is original (mostly following
@seanmcarroll
and David Tong), but I drew lots of figures.
Enjoyed this short book on Quantum Field Theory by
@JFdonoghue1033
and Sorbo. In just over 100 pages they cover quite a bit, including a nice discussion of renormalization and EFT. Perfect for my short flight today 😀
Funny moment in today's lecture. After finishing the computation of the precession of Mercury and showing that it matches observations, the whole class spontaneously applauds, some cheer. Never happened to me before in a class :)
David Tong wrote some notes on particle physics and QFT using only high-school maths: I haven't read it yet, but coming from David they are surely awesome.
"Physics is hard. It is harder if you are a woman, if your skin is brown, if you are gay, if you do not identify with the other physicists around you." Helen Quinn (via
@FlipTanedo
).
It is time to change this.
Big news for the new year: On January 1, I will become the new director of the Leung Center for Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics (LeCosPA). I am very excited about the new challenge (and slightly terrified).
Passing of the torch: Daniel Baumann will be the new director of LeCosPA, succeeding the founding director Pisin Chen. We are very grateful to Pisin for over 16 years of leadership of our institute, and wish Daniel all the best in his new role.
From David Tong's GR lecture notes: "What follows is the mathematical equivalent of reading a biography about an interesting person and having to spend the first 20 pages wading through a description of what their grandparents did for a living."
Dear Cosmology Friends, Here is a selection of color figures from my new textbook
(individual figures here: ) Please feel free to use them if you find them useful for anything.
Just attended David Tong's particle physics lecture for the CERN undergraduate summer school.
He covered 6 slides and answered a million questions. Brilliantly done!
Thrilled to have received an ERC Synergy Grant together with my colleagues Nima Arkani-Hamed, Johannes Henn and Bernd Sturmfels. Looking forward to this collaboration between physics, cosmology and mathematics.
@ERC_Research
#ERCSyG
📣 Results of the 2023 ERC Synergy Grant competition are out!
37 research groups win a total of €395 million in
#ERCSyG
funding 👉 This will enable them to pool diverse expertise and resources to push the frontiers of knowledge.
Full story:
🇪🇺
#EUfunded
It looks like Cosmology will be translated into Japanese. In the process, I will also be given the chance to correct mistakes (also in the English edition). If you found any errors, I would be grateful if you could send me a message.
Great article by
@nattyover
on the naturalness "crisis" in fundamental physics and attempts to use UV/IR mixing to address it.
It reminded me of Weinberg's review on the cosmological constant problem, with probably my favorite opening sentence:
One of the best parts of my job is to work with brilliant students and then see them go out into the world. Today my 5th PhD student left the nest. (I am also still on track to assemble the United Nations with my PhD students: 🇫🇷🇩🇪🇳🇿🇰🇷🇲🇾🇪🇸🇮🇹🇦🇷 Physics is international 🥰)
From a student evaluation: "I knew jack shit about cosmology before I did this course. Now I know how to calculate how different species of particle contribute to the expansion of the universe. I didn't know it was even possible to calculate that. 1/2
Only 60 pages into the new book by
@MattStrassler
, but I am already loving it. Very careful explanations of basic physics, proving that popular books don’t have to rush to extra dimensions, wormholes and multiverses to be exciting.
One of my postdocs asked me yesterday who I predicted for the physics Nobel prize. I said "Jim Peebles" :) (To be fair, Jim Peebles has been my standard answer for many years now.) So well-deserved! He is a giant in our field and one of the kindest persons I know.
One the favorite parts of my job is to be on PhD committees and see all the amazing things done by PhD students. This time I immensely enjoyed learning about the history of dark matter from Jaco de Swart’s beautifully written thesis.
IT'S HERE! My dissertation! After five insane yrs there's now this: 300 pages of dark matter history! Printed on paper made of 100% agricultural waste 🌱 Oh, and I'll be defending this 'lil book NEXT WEEK!! ⚔️
"Cosmology" won the PROSE Award in the Category "Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, and Cosmology". Last year, the award went to
@CburgesCliff
's book, so we are keeping it in the family 😀
If there is one thing I wish I had learned earlier it is effective field theory.
@CburgesCliff
now has a new book on the subject that I highly recommend (knowing his excellent reviews on EFT)
First up, here are some notes on historical papers. Warning: It is still work in progress and I am absolutely no expert on the history of cosmology. Please message me if you have comments and corrections.
Cosmology friends: I just read Lifshitz' 1946 paper on cosmological perturbation theory. It is remarkable how complete it is. (Introduces SVT decomposition, finds solutions for matter and radiation backgrounds, understands gauge modes, etc)
New paper to appear tonight with Nima Arkani-Hamed, Hayden Lee and Guilherme Pimentel. I am very excited about this, and probably haven't worked as hard since grad school :)
I received amazingly detailed comments and corrections on the CMB chapter of my book from Anthony Challinor. The chapter will have many fewer errors thanks to him. Knowing Anthony I am not surprised, but it is still remarkable.
This year I have the privilege to teach General Relativity. I won’t have time to write my own lecture notes, but fortunately there is the excellent book by
@seanmcarroll
A colleague of mine asked me for ideas about "surprising/interesting places where mathematics appears in physics" for a popular book. Any ideas? What are your favorite examples?
Dear students, fantastic advice on "You and Your Research" by
@nu_phases
in this video:
I wish I had listened to something like this when I was younger.
What I really appreciate about Harry Cliff’s book is that it is mostly about exceptionally clear explanations of solid physics. For example, he explains in detail why stars shine, which is more fascinating than whether there is a multiverse or extra dimensions.
Fun fact. If electrons and nuclei had not formed atoms, the cosmic microwave background would still have decoupled from charged matter due to cosmic expansion, albeit delayed by 100s of millions of years compared to the atomic recombination scenario. A-a-nd humans wouldn't exist.
Picked up this new book by
@ProfBrianCox
and
@JeffRForshaw
while in Cambridge this week. So far, I like it a lot. It makes heavy use of Penrose diagrams to get into much more detail than expected from a popular book.
It took at while to arrive in Taiwan, but I just received
@WKCosmo
’s
#AnInfinityOfWorlds
. I look forward to reading it. I also got another copy of Weinberg’s “Dreams of a Final Theory” since I left mine in Amsterdam and realized I couldn’t live without it 😀
New paper on the "Ionization of Gravitational Atoms" with Giovanni Maria Tomaselli (a fantastic new PhD student), John Stout and
@gfbertone
, building on earlier work with
@horngsheng
and
@RAPortoUY
.
A short summary follows 👇🏼
The recorded
@LeCosPA_NTU
seminars can now be found online:
So far, just the fantastic talks of Chiara Mingarelli and Scott Melville, but more to follow soon.