A pedagogic picture is worth a thousand theorems

This brief pedagogical outline of key ideas, text books, and literature concerns
pinning down the minimal set of physics ideas and mathematical tools required to
understand the Standard Model and its various extensions through a generalized
grammar of fundamental physics and mathematical constructs compelled on us by
our experimental corpus. There is also available a longer, far more detailed,
historically based follow-on syllabus on these topics. As in this outline, the followon document also lists the good text books and key references from the literature,
the key ideas and methods, several logical approaches to pursue these readings,
but also the innate dead ends and fundamental impasses inherent in physics and
mathematics that proscribe our wayward pursuit of absolute, ideal Truth as Plato
conceived it. The intent of these documents is to provide a guided path to a more
mature theoreticians grammar.
What is meant by a more mature theoreticians grammar? Consider a lifeguard,
sitting at his watch post at the beach, who detects a drowning person off to the side
in the water, he must make an optimal decision of how much to run on the sand, a
fast process, and how much to swim in the water, a slow process. He has infinitely
many paths to chose from, but only one choice, or function that is, is optimal in
minimizing the intercept time. An application of simple differential calculus renders
us this optimal function, giving us a particular solution, which, by the way, also
describes the refraction of light between two different media, e.g., between air and
water, where the speed of light, like the life guard, is faster in the former and slower
in the latter. Now consider another seemingly unrelated optimization problem. A
cable suspended between two poles of differing heights assumes a unique shape to
minimize its potential energy from an infinite set of functions. Find the curve
satisfying the stated condition. When you find this solution, you will have another
particular solution to this other optimization problem. Proceeding in this ad hoc
way, you will collect more and more special, individual, particular optimization
solutions to particular optimization problems. In this sense, when there is no rhyme
or reason between optimization problems and their solutions, your optimization
grammar is immature. Only after you develop the calculus of variations, unifying
otherwise disparate optimization problems, will you have acquired a more mature,
more unified grammar capable of treating a large, general class of optimization
problems including many of those posed by physics. This calculus of variations is
part of a more general theoreticians grammar.
Another example of this kind of maturation is exemplified by the work of Bernhard
Riemann shortly after the discovery of the first few non-Euclidean geometries, e.g.,
Bolyai-Lobachevskian hyperbolic geometry early in the 19 th century, and elliptical
geometry (Saccheri). He quickly generalized the small set of known geometries into
an infinity of geometries through a small set of unifying concepts today falling under
the rubric of Riemannian geometry. Interestingly, Bolyai mentioned in his work that
it is not possible to decide through mathematical reasoning alone if the geometry of

the physical universe is Euclidean or non-Euclidean; this, he stated, is a task for the
physical sciences, and indeed this is what the physicist Albert Einstein succeeded at
advancing beyond the Euclidean worldview when he developed general relativity to
describe astrophysical observations in the framework of curved spacetime. As was
the case with Riemann quickly generalizing a handful of recently developed
geometries into infinitely many more geometries, it did not take long after the
announcement of general relativity for people to cook up endless many more
geometric theories beginning with the original Kaluza-Klein theory, a clever fivedimensional curved spacetime construct devised to unify gravity and
electromagnetism. Today this type of theorizing continues unabated, seemingly
pell-mell; witness string theory and Weyl-Dirac theory to name but two.
Fortunately this growing bulk of theoretical constructs still remains bound together
by a relatively small thread of key physics and mathematical ideas and methods.
Unfortunately, with physicists and mathematicians having gone hog wild, we are
losing this thread. The swell of theoretical particularizations issuing from this small
set of ideas and methods overwhelm us. Most doctoral level physicists, for
example, have learned quite a lot about special functions, but they have probably
only picked up a little, disparate knowledge about Lie algebras and Lie groups.
They do not realizecertainly most of them dont have tothat these two areas are
actually very tightly linked together by the powerful theorems of Sophus Lie, and
their inverse theorems. Special functions, Lie groups, Lie algebras, commutators,
and much more that goes into the particles and fields of the Standard Model and
beyond actually go hand in hand in a relatively simple and unified grammar. So
where are we heading? To the sources of this small unified grammar, at least those
that worked for me.
Mathematics/Physics block I (Least Action):
1. Mathematics: Calculus of variations
a. Calculus of Variations, L. D. Elsgolc, Dover Publications. Originally
written in Russian, this book was first published in English in 1961.
Using clear notation, Elsgolc develops the calculus of variations sideby-side with ordinary differential calculus. Starting with a challenge to
Isaac Newton, this calculus originated from extremization problems in
physics, e.g., least time, maximum entropy, least action. The Standard
Model, general relativity, string theories, to name but a few, are
expressible in terms of least action. Ideally this book should be read
before graduate work in physics, around the time junior level
mechanics has been covered.
b. Variational Principles in Dynamics and Quantum Theory, W. Yourgrau
and S. Mandelstam, Dover Publications. Tracing the evolution of the
concept of the innate economy of nature (least action) from the Greeks
through to Fermats principle of least time and Maupertuis le principe
de la moindre quantit daction (least action) in 1744, this book traces
the development of the equations of Lagrange, Hamilton, HamiltonJacobi, etc., in classical mechanics and electrodynamics to the various

historical paths to quantum physics including those of Feynman and

Schwinger. This book should probably be read concurrently during the
first year of graduate school, if not at the completion of the
undergraduate degree. Without these readings, or similar, the use of
the principle of least action is little more than a physics gimmick.
2. Physics: Classical Mechanics
a. Newtonian Dynamics, R. Baierlien, McGraw-Hill Book Company. This is
a beautifully written, concise presentation of undergraduate classical
mechanics. Baierlein covers everything essential for further graduate
work, including perturbation theory, nonlinear oscillators, and
Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics. Read it shortly after the
above two texts on the calculus of variations.
b. Classical Mechanics, H. Goldstein, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Incorporating all of the above readings, this book expands on Baierlein
and generalizes the grammar of physics underlying relativity and
quantum field theories. On pages 491 and 492 of the second edition,
Goldstein describes how close Hamilton came in 1834 to the wave
equation of Schrdinger and de Broglie of 1926. In a more direct
manner than W. Yourgrau and S. Mandelstam, Goldstein connects how
various least action formulations of classical mechanics led to various
formulations of quantum mechanics.
c. Quantum Mechanics, Schaums Outlines. This is a pretty good, selfcontained introductory text on quantum mechanics. It contains many
little typos, but fixing them is very educational and reassuring.
d. Basic Quantum Mechanics, K. Ziock, 1969. This book may be difficult
to acquire, and the foundations you need in quantum mechanics are
well covered by the above Schaums Outlines text. However, Ziock
gives a very nice lowbrow approach to positronium and covers partial
wave scattering in more depth than usual.
Mathematics/Physics block II (Classical and Quantum Fields):
Whereas the first block recommends the mathematics readings prior to, or
concurrent with the physics readings, this block goes the other way around.
1. Physics:
a. Introduction to Electrodynamics, D. Griffiths (a classical field
theory). A lot of the material in this text, as in any electrodynamics
text for physicists, deals with electrodynamics in media and other
areas which seem unrelated to QED. The physical intuition
developed, and the mathematical skills learned from reading the
entire text are invaluable beyond 4-potential formulations of
radiation fields in the usual gauges. This goes for, Classical
Electrodynamics, 2nd ed., J. D. Jackson, Wiley. Jackson will give you
a work out in mathematical physics, much of it related to special
functions.
b. Quantum Mechanics, Schaums Outlinessee block I above.
c. (Strongly recommended) Modern Quantum Mechanics, J. J. Sakurai.
Group theory begins to enter the picture in the study of
permutation symmetry and Young Tableaux.

d. (Also recommended) Quantum Mechanics, C. Cohen-Tannoudji, B.

Diu, and F. Lalo. This text is far more detailed than the Schaums
text, providing many more applications and mathematical
underpinnings to quantum mechanics.
e. Introduction To Elementary Particles, D. Griffiths. This is a great
introductory textbook to take you from experimental particle
physics to hands on practice with low order Feynman diagrams in
electrodynamics, weak, and strong nuclear interactions.
NoteFrom all of the particulars of a. through e., one begins to get the feeling that
there should be a more general, overarching grammar to physics, otherwise physics
begins to seem more like a set of unexplained voodoo prescriptions.
2. Quantum Electrodynamics, W Greiner and J Reinhardt, 3 rd ed., Springer.
Another pedagogical text, this book presents, detail by detail, QED the old
fashioned way, the way people, including Feynman, first developed QED. I
believe this is an essential read if you want to understand QFT, including
some of the early issues with divergences.
3. Quantum Field Theory, 2nd ed., L. H. RyderThis is a very well written
introductory text on QFT up through introductory supersymmetry (SUSY).
Ryder surveys relativistic wave equations and Lagrangian methods, the
quantum theory of scalar and spinor fields, and then the guage fields. In
chapter 3, Ryder carefully explains the principle of minimal coupling by
requiring local invariance of, firstly, the Lagrangian for the complex scalar
field before moving on treat Yang-Mills fields. Also in chapter 3, Ryder
points out the parallels originating from parallel transport in general
relativity in the framework of a manifold, and parallel transport in the
algebra of quantum fields in the framework of continuous Lie groups. Is
this parallel an accident? Is there a deeper level of grammar? The
answers to these questions are not easily found in popular QFT texts, nor
in books on the mathematics of differential geometry, group theory, or
algebraic topology. In fact, most books purportedly treating these areas of
mathematics for the physicist also fail to deliver the deeper grammar.
Answers from history:
4. Lie Groups, Lie Algebras, and Some of Their Applications, R. Gilmore,
Dover, was originally published in 1974. In the same sense that the two
books on the calculus of variations, Elsgolc 1961, and W. Yourgrau and S.
Mandelstam 1968 provide the fundamental least action underpinnings of
classical and quantum physics, Gilmore provides the foundations to the
prescriptions in standard QFT books. The physicists book, Lie Algebras
In Particle Physics, From Isospin to Unified Theories, 2 nd ed., H. Georgi
makes a ton more sense after Gilmore. If I had stumbled across Gilmore
sooner, I probably wouldnt have spent years pouring over a ton of pure
mathematics texts, never quite understanding how to bridge pure
algebraic topology back to quantum fields. The following books should
probably be read in reverse order from the way I found and read them.
They are:

5. Groups, Representations And Physics, 2nd ed., H. F. Jones, Institute of

Physics Publishing. This was the first book that took me a long way into
both understanding and being able to apply group theoretic methods to
quantum mechanics and quantum fields. After working through Jones,
however, I still felt there was a deeper plane of truth, or a better grammar
if you will. There was still too much genius, too much particularization.
Before reading Jones, I recommend as a minimal prerequisite an
introductory text on group theory at the Schaums outline level. I
personally like, Modern Algebra, An Introduction, 2 nd ed., J. R. Durbin,
Wiley. You need only cover the material up through group theory. Take
with you the notion of a normal subgroup when you proceed to read
Gilmore.
6. Lie Algebras In Particle Physics, From Isospin to Unified Theories, 2 nd. ed.,
H. Georgi, Frontiers in Physics. I couldnt have read this book without first
having read and worked through Jones. Georgi was difficult for me, but
when I cracked it, I began to feel like I was starting to understand the
physicist instead of the mathematician. Ideally, read the first four
chapters of R. Gilmores text first. The 5th chapter covers applications to
areas typically presented in graduate physics coursework. Then read
Jones, then Georgi. There will be much less for you to have to accept by
fiat.
History: (quoted from Gilmores text) This study of simultaneous differential
equations led Lie to investigate continuous transformation groups, from which the
theory of Lie groups emerged. Lie groups have been studied so extensively in their
own right that their connection with partial differential equations is often overlooked
and forgotten[a bad thing!]. So it is sometimes quite a shock to learn that many
of the differential equations of mathematical physics are expressions of the Casimir
invariant of some Lie group in a particular representation and moreover, that all the
standard special functions of mathematical physics are simply related to matrix
elements in the representation of a few of the simplest Lie groups. It is safe to say
that Lie group theory provides a unifying viewpoint for the study of all the special
functions and all their properties. I suggest you put aside your modern books on
mathematical physics, go back in time and read:
7. A Course of Modern Analysis, E. T. Whittaker, 4 th ed., poorly reprinted by
Cambridge University Press. The first edition dates back to 1902. Once you
understand the three theorems of Lie, and their inverses in R. Gilmores text, you
will come to appreciate deep mathematical physics and analysis as a unified whole
with the help of 4th ed. Whittaker. There are a handful of very expensive books
directly tying Lies work directly to mathematical physics. I recently found a good
book online, The Lie theory approach to special functions, W. Miller, University of
Minnesota, 2010.
I must admit that the material in Gilmore after chapter 5, on the general structure
theory of Lie groups, is difficult going. Ironically, once you understand the first 4
chapters of Gilmore, you probably will get a lot of help from Jones and from Georgi
to work through the remainder of Gilmore, especially from chapter 7 onwards,
where Gilmore starts trotting out of the big guns to demolish the structure of an
algebra into its irreducible components, namely:

(1) The adjoint or regular representation, equivalent to the structure

constants.
(2) The use of the secular equation and its roots, which lead to further
information about the structure of a group. The information is summarized in the
first criterion of solvability.
(3) The use of a metric (Cartan-Killing form) on the vector space associated
with the Lie algebra. The information is summarized in the second criterion of
solvability.
(4) The folding of the first two criteria in the Cartan criterion.
(5) The exploitation of the root and metric concepts to give a canonical
structure to the commutation relations of the regular representation of semisimple
algebras.
Im hoping that Group theory and physics, S. Stemberg, Cambridge, which Ive
just acquired, will also provide more help with the above toolset. QFT literature is
rife with results derived from the above big guns.
At this point you now have a path to the underpinnings of two major chunks of the
mature grammar of modern QFT theorizing: the principle of least action, and tools
for studying the structure of Lie groups and Lie algebras (and particle spectra). Still
missing is a deeper, more general understanding of the principle of minimal
coupling resulting from the requirement of local invariance of Yang-Mills Lagrangian
densities. To maintain invariance under local transformationsthe steps being
presented very clearly in Ryderrequires the addition of extra terms. In the case of
the complex scalar field, the extra terms correspond to electrodynamics expressed
in the potential formulationhence why I suggest you understand electrodynamics
at least at the level of Griffiths. Your radar should be on, looking for a more mature
grammar to the principle of minimal coupling, especially after reviewing basic
Kaluza-Klein theory. Kaluza-Klein theory was an early attempt to unify
electromagnetism with gravity, and it goes like this: An extra fifth spatial dimension
can be understood to be the circle group U(1) as electromagnetism.
Electromagnetism can be formulated as a guage theory on a fiber bundle, namely
the circle bundle with guage group U(1). Once this geometrical interpretation is
understood, it is relatively straightforward to replace U(1) by a general Lie group.
Such generalizations are often called YangMills theories in flat spacetime, as
opposed to curved spacetime in Kaluza-Klein theory. Note that Kaluza-Klein theory
(in any (pseudo-)Riemannian manifold, even a supersymmetric manifold) can be
generalized beyond 4 spatial dimensions. So is there a good book out there to view
this approach in a more unified way? Yes.
8. Geometry, Topology and Physics, M. Nakahara, Graduate Student Series in
Physics, chapter 9. I read the first four chapters before skipping to chapter 9. To
me, chapter 9 seems fairly self-contained. However, by the time I happened upon
Nakahara, my background in mathematics was far beyond my 36 hour masters
degree in pure mathematics, and I also knew what the goal was beforehand thanks
to another book, namely, Topology, Geometry, and Gauge Fields, Foundations, G.
L. Naber. Naber sucks. Naber is part of the reason I overdid mathematics, but
Naber put the goal, the mature grammar in easy to understand words. These Lie
algebra-valued 1-formsare called connections on the bundle (or, in the physics
literature, guage potentials). The guage fields in QFTs are connections over

principle bundles. If anything, you have to read Nabers chapter 0 for motivation,
and Ive reluctantly come to appreciate all of the mathematics I studied trying to get
through Naber, especially differential forms. At this point I began to see that there
is probably no end to physics theoreticians cooking up hypothetical universes that
dont necessarily have to have anything to do with what we perceive to be our
universe. Even theorizing over our own apparent universe is probably unlimited.
The creative degrees of freedom to cook up mathematical universes that behave at
low energy like what we observe seem infinite. As our experimental knowledge
grows, we exile certain theories of physics into the realm of mathematics, only to
quickly create a whole new frontier of endless physics-based possible universes.
This realization took the wind out of my pursuing my belief in Einsteins dream of a
final theory. By the way, I found a pretty tidy review of differential forms online,
namely, Introduction to differential forms, D. Arapua, 2009. I was never satisfied
by any of the physics books purportedly written to teach forms.
Summary of mature grammar memes so far: (physics : mathematics)

Principle of least action : Calculus of Variations.

Principle of minimal coupling : Connections/principle bundles, forms.

Particles and Fields; SUSY : Lies theorems, their inverse theorems, and the
classification problem; graded algebras (Ryder)

World lines World Sheets: Strings (A First Course in String Theory, B.

Zweibach, Cambridge University Press.

I do not touch on the concept of symmetry breaking to give mass to Yang-Mills field
theories. Entry level QFT texts do a reasonably good job treating this. One area Im
still missing is that dealing with effective Lagrangians and renormalization theory.
The following two articles were strongly recommended to me as good primers. The
methods of the renormalization group and Effective Lagrangians. Read: Effective
Field Theories, A. V. Manohar, arXiv:hep-ph9606222v1 4 June 1996. Effective Field
Theory, A. Pitch arXiv:hep-ph9806303v1 3 June 1998.
All of the above memes wrapped up in a Lagrangian expressing least action,
minimal coupling, geometry, algebra, topology, and algebraic topology, is how
weve come to think about our universe, and hypothetical universes. Its an entry
level, minimally mature grammar to muse about universes and existences in the
sense of Newton: I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I
seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in
now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the
great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
PSThe mathematicians over do it and the physicists under do it. How much
pure math do you have to study to start R. Gilmore? Point set topology begins
with abstracting the topological properties of the real line, e.g., Hausdorff
separability. This field then proceeds on far past what a physicist needs to get
started. The connection between the concept of closed and bounded to many
theorems, like the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem is also important, but it leads to
foundations problems in mathematics. I cover the history of these sticky issues

with the Zermelo-Frankel axioms, like the Banach-Tarski paradox, and the
limitations weve discovered to be inherent in mathematics as discovered by
Cohen and Gdel in the follow-on work. Naturally, I also discuss some of the
inherent limitations in physics that Ive come across. As for an algebra
background to Gilmore, all the background I found necessary from my training in
pure mathematics was little more than the concept of a normal subgroup. Only
once Gilmore begins to develop the structure of Lie groups does all of the dry
crap on towers in a standard graduate text on algebra, such as Lang, start to
make sense beyond symbol manipulation. In the end, studying mathematics for
its own sake is great, but it can sure slow you down if youre interested in
physics.
The audience: The intended audience spans across people with a varied, but
minimal, entry level background. The bare bones entry level is for those with no
less than a year of differential and integral calculus and/or a year of calculus based
physics. The follow-on work both outlines and motivates what mathematics and
physics areas you shall require in order to proceed, the standard types of books,
and the corresponding courses found at colleges and universities, not that you cant
study on your own. That this follow-on presents the underlying key historical
motivations and interlinking of the various subject matters makes it worth a look at.
The ideal minimal entry level is a good undergraduate degree in physics with at
least an introductory course in modern algebra (to the point of understanding what
a normal subgroup is), and at least enough real analysis to understand very basic
point set topology up to what being Hausdorff means. A chemist, mathematician, or
engineer should familiarize himself or herself with classical mechanics at the junior
level up to the concept of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics, e.g., Ralph
Baierlein, Newtonian Dynamics, 1983. He or she should also review one
semesters worth of electricity and magnetism at the junior level, e.g., Griffiths,
Introduction to Electrodynamics, and at least one semester of quantum
mechanics at the junior or senior level. The Schaums Outline in Quantum
mechanics is good enough, especially if you bother to fix its many minor typosa
great exercise. Some members of the intended audience may already have
possession of all of the requirements, but havent been shown the connections
because these are being lost to history.
The apology: This outline and the follow-on work will only guide you to a
connected path to more mature grammar for studying QFTs up through introductory
level graduate and introductory post-graduate textsmore than enough to ponder
over universes. I wrote this stuff because I learned black magic and voodoo in
school when what I sought was understanding. Instead of understanding, I learned
for example of a prescription, or a spell if you will, for turning classical physics
quantities like total energy and total angular momentum into quantum mechanical
operators, leading to quantum mechanical differential equations with quantized
eigenstates. I had to press on and prepare for qualifying exams.

It was during my years working as a nuclear weapons physicist at Los Alamos

National Laboratory that I had both the time and reason to finally put together a
unified mapping of applied mathematics and physics foundations. Unless youre
happy to only run weapons codes written by others, and otherwise ape intelligence
with technical babble read off PowerPoint slides, nuclear weapons physics forces
you to go back to every core area covered in a graduate physics program, and then
some. Certainly you have to pin down thermodynamics, statistical physics,
electricity and magnetism, mathematical methods of physics, nuclear physics,
numerical simulation of complex, coupled systems such as stars, and to a degree
some portions of quantum mechanics for deriving a few, limited equations of state,
a little special relativity for computing corrections to certain classical results, and a
skill at unifying a wide variety of as yet poorly understood, fleeting, typically
unstable phenomenology. The digging and battling kindles an intuition between
theory and experimental reality which a good astrophysicist might develop, but
which a so-called financial physicist might not, excepting, of course, the deep
mathematical analysis underpinnings of Monte Carlo transport methods. The
follow-on work attempts to provide a list of what core knowledge and underlying
references are important for developing good physics intuitions no matter what you
do for a living. This first part of my journey took around five years after I finished
my formal schooling. The stuff above on the core of physics and mathematics
underpinning our theoretical toolset regarding real and hypothetical particles, fields
and universes with a mature grammar, took an additional five years of my time. In
all honesty, the process wasnt really that linear.