Talk:Quantum triviality

Quantum triviality revert

Moved from User talk:Headbomb

I am decoupling from any effort to fix the article, whose quality is sunk, and it does not feature in my watchlist. I think it unfriendly to the defenseless reader to impart the misimpression of an unresolved question "tilting" in one direction by some recent "evidence" on the basis of "published" work in a journal---whose refereeing and communication stance the average reader of this article would have no way of validating or assessing. It is not the formal statements at issue, but their excessive implications and the invitation to the reader to think in a given direction, all but watching a controversy unfold from one side. Please note what you are encouraging being said, and let your conscience be your guide. I tried. Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 15:18, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Not really sure what you're talkign about but JETP is, as far as I'm aware, a highly regarded journal and does met reliability requirements, so does not consist of original research. The relevant sentence ("The evidence in favour of its positive solution has appeared recently") seems to be reliably backed up, and does not imply more than what is written. That is, evidence for the positive solution has been presented ("appeared recently") [which is true], but the article isn't stating anywhere that these papers are the final word on the topic. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:17, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, Suslov work is well backed up by other authors' works that are yet not published but appeared recently on arxiv , so I avoid to put them in the body of the article. These papers prove beyond any doubt that the scalar field theory in the infrared for d=4 is trivial and let me say that, when different respectable people find the same results with different approaches, I am quite sure that the result is correct. My view is that a support from lattice computations would be useful here even if not so easy to obtain.--Pra1998 (talk) 19:54, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

The relevant issue here is whether Suslov's work deserves such a commanding presence in this Wiki article. The concept that a scalar field theory is trivial has been advanced for many years, most particularly by the work of Froehlich and Aizenman, decades ago (neither one of which is discussed in this Wiki, incidentally). I would suspect that, if one were to take a poll of any particle physicist active over the last 30 years, the overwhelming support would be in favor of the idea that a phi4 field theory is trivial in four spacetime dimensions.

It is important to recognize that this is not a criticism of Suslov's work. It is probably correct, insofar as it reaches the correct conclusions. One might compare the endless proofs and re-proofs of the two-dimensional Ising model, originally obtained by Onsager, but rederived and amplified by countless others. The point for Wikipedia, however, is this. What makes the Suslov papers different from all others? Wikipedia is not a notice board. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of papers that argue phi4 triviality by various means. What makes this paper unique? More importantly, in order to avoid independent research, there must be an independent source that tells us that this paper stands above the other hundreds for some reason. Is it published on the front page of Physics Today? Is there an article on the front page of a famous magazine or newspaper? How do we assess the relative worth of one paper? I do not see why this paper is special, and Wikipedia, in order to avoid OR, should not have to.

There should be an independent source that tells us that this work is better than the others, or there should be a large rollback.

Kind regards to all, Ken —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenneth Dawson (talk • contribs) 00:18, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

The question shouldn't be "why is Suslov's work special?", but rather "does it support the claim being made" and "is there a better reference for the claim being made?" If it supports the claim, there's no problem. If there's a better reference available (like a review, or a book), then it should be a simple matter to replace Suslov's paper with something better. In the meantime, we have a claim which is apparently not controversial, backed up by a reliable source. Removing it thus makes the article worse.

As far as whether Suslov's claims are right or not, I'm completely unqualified to judge. I know φ⁴'s important somehow in field theory, since I see it mentioned everywhere in physics journals, but what it is I couldn't even begin to tell you. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:34, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Let me state clearly what is the importance of Suslov and others work and why this should be cited here. I would like to emphasize that there is no need to have one's work discussed in a famous magazine or newspaper to be important and being inserted in a Wikipedia article. For our luck, science does not work in this way. On the contrary, there are a lot of bad examples of works discussed in the media and finally lost in the dark being some kind of failures. Suslov and others determine the form of the beta function of the scalar field theory in the low energy limit (infrared). Independently from other aspects, this is a fundamental result per se to be put on the same ground of the value of this function in the ultraviolet that appears in all quantum field theory textbooks. This gives a definite answer to the question of the behavior of the coupling of this fundamental theory when energy goes to zero and represents a relevant starting point for the understanding of others and more difficult theories. Rather, what has been put here should be improved as a presentation stating clearly the main conclusion of these works. This should also help to understand what quantum triviality should mean, a matter to be fully clarified yet as stated in the article.--Pra1998 (talk) 08:32, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

That's just not the way Wikipedia works. It is a tertiary source, which means that it basically does the news, long after it becomes news. It is not a place to advance one's own ideas. Mind you, I am not saying that you are wrong about Suslov's work--it could be the greatest thing since buttered bread, or it could be utter nonsense. I can't tell, and that is the point. Wiki is a place to describe famous ideas, long after they become famous, and have been reported to be so in reliable media. As one idea, you might check out the number of citations that the papers receive (maybe Google Scholar). Once the work becomes famous, it deserves to be described in Wiki. But it has to be famous first. You are correct in implying that many great discoveries get lost or ignored, and that is a pity, but it is not the place of Wikipedia to correct that. Maybe a bit like an election--you think candidate X is better than Y, and you might be correct, but that is OR/POV. The one who gets elected--well, that is Wiki material. I still think this article deserves some major rollbacks. Kind regards, Ken.Kenneth Dawson (talk) 13:32, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I cannot agree. It is not stated in any place for Wikipedia that to appear something in it must be famous. I prefer that Wikipedia would convey correct information, nothing else. Besides, due to the way it is conceived, it can be updated more than any other source and in real time. That is the way it should be seen. This implies that, if an idea is proved correct, as happens to material published in respected journals as JETP is, it can go through articles. We act this way on physics articles and I think there is no infringiment of any written law by doing this. If you take some time to go around on scientific articles you will notice that this is the approach pursued so far. I find this a good way to proceed as a scientific Wikipedia article becomes very helpful both to students and scholars making Wikipedia a very relevant source to rely on. It should not be forgotten that people writing these articles are also the people that do research on these matters. It should be left a freedom to them to make the most recent results widely known also through this source. This makes Wikipedia stronger.--Pra1998 (talk) 14:18, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Temporarily back, I fail to desist, perhaps improvidently: So, could you possibly tell me, what is the conclusion of the article meant to be? Can there, or can there not be a Higgs? Thousands of high energy physicists are itching to know. What happens if a Higgs were discovered? What, if not, all the way to the "common-agreement" upper bound? Isn't this the substantial core of what the article promises to illuminate, and proffers "recent" formal developments helpful to its final settlement? What is the long-awaited resolution, and what is the well-meaning intelligent reader meant to take away by reading this article? Is she meant to hit the original references, down to the last, to settle the matter as a research project? I thought the debate I appear to have missed was not on infringements of laws, but on protecting the reader. I will desist from rating the article, but I'd hope my point of Oct 28 were not lost... (A pedantic aside: Gell-Mann & Low, Phys Rev 95, 1300–1312 (1954) , DOI:10.1103/PhysRev.95.1300 , prior to all refs adduced, already cover 2/3 of the argument.) Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 00:00, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

When I read something like this I feel like we, the people that is doing research in physics, are fighting against windmills, a lot of them around the World, and I believe that ignorance will dominate humankind forever. I will try to use plain English to make clear what is at stake here. Beta functions are fundamental to understand the physics of a quantum field theory when the energy range is varied. This idea dates back from the paper of Gell-mann and Low you cite till the fundamental works of Symanzik and Callan that clearly state what beta function is there for and what we should mean by a running coupling. Of course, renormalization group is not dead with the work of Gell-mann and Low but is still kicking an alive as the work of Suslov and others is there to prove. It would be very nice to have a beta function for the full energy range of a given theory but, unfortunately, we are only able to do perturbation theory with a small parameter in quantum field theory, this is all we have, and this means that, for most part of known quantum field theories, we just know the way a running coupling runs at very high energies. When you talk about triviality of the Higgs field this is not much to help. You need to compute your beta function in a regime where you have no perturbation theory. When you will have done this, if you are able to do it, you will compute your beta function there and you will be able to uncover if your theory is trivial or not. Suslov and others just prove that the beta function for the scalar field theory in that limit is $\beta (\lambda )=d\lambda$ being d the space-time dimension. This result is obtained with several different approaches and if you use the Callan-Symazik equation this is just saying to you that the running coupling is going to zero and the theory is indeed trivial. Is this important? For us doing quantum field theory this just closes an old question and answers to all people asking about the fate of Higgs field. But as you can see, and as is pointed out correctly in the Wikipedia article, people is debating yet about how one should define quantum triviality. Now, this appears really silly as Suslov and others result is just a definition of triviality and should close any further discussion. The point is that a lot of very smart people have said something about this and so, before the question is settled, some time is needed, But, as you can see here, is difficult to have a historical perspective on such a fresh result.--Pra1998 (talk) 18:40, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed! We who endure in research in quantum field theory are ever tilting at windmills... Granted the evident fact, with Froehlich et al, that plain φ⁴ is infrared fee. Consider the standard, full, electroweak model, graced by now by two Nobel prizes, and anxiously hankering for a third. So, which is it? Hundreds, nay, thousands, of high energy physicists are waiting for the answer: Is Higg's quartic model inconsistent?. If there were a firm answer to the question, as ominously threatened in this article, well, it would be most welcome, even though, admittedly, Wikipedia would be an odd venue for its announcement. But, given the virulent apetite for bogus revelation of our world, well... Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 20:19, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Outdated

This article is out-of-date since the discovery of the Higgs boson. Someone knowledgeable on the Standard Model should update it. I might have a go if there are no takers. 76.181.228.207 (talk) 17:08, 7 October 2015 (UTC)