Incoming links: Ciro Santilli
It is fucking annoying!
- www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/pn21dn/have_to_log_in_every_time_i_restart_the_browser/
- www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/6qwm9w/automatic_login_to_protonmail_from_browser/
- protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas/suggestions/48228635-mail-proton-me-should-automatically-login-to-last
Not just on browser close. Whenever Ciro Santilli pastes proton.me/ on the browser bar and click enter. Chromium 123.
More precisely: pasting mail.proton.me on the browser bar redirects to account.proton.me/switch each time. From there, selecting different accounts leads to different mail.proton.me/u/<UID>/inbox, e.g. mail.proton.me/u/41/inbox is my main one. If I paste mail.proton.me/u/41/inbox on the browser, then it works directly.
If Ciro Santilli ever becomes rich, he's going to solve this with: website front-end for a mathematical formal proof system, promise.
The leading open source cross architecture and KVM emulator of the 2010's.
Great way to understand how operating systems work, which Ciro Santilli used extensively in his Linux Kernel Module Cheat.
Ciro Santilli has some good related articles listed under: the best articles by Ciro Santillis.
Ciro Santilli has always had a good impression of these people.
This paper appears to calculate the Schrödinger equation solution for the hydrogen atom.
TODO is this the original paper on the Schrödinger equation?
Published on Annalen der Physik in 1926.
Open access in German at: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/andp.19263840404 which gives volume 384, Issue 4, Pages 361-376. Kudos to Wiley for that. E.g. Nature did not have similar policies as of 2023.
This paper may have fallen into the public domain in the US in 2022! On the Internet Archive we can see scans of the journal that contains it at: ia903403.us.archive.org/29/items/sim_annalen-der-physik_1926_79_contents/sim_annalen-der-physik_1926_79_contents.pdf. Ciro Santilli extracted just the paper to: commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AQuantisierung_als_Eigenwertproblem.pdf. It is not as well processed as the Wiley one, but it is of 100% guaranteed clean public domain provenance! TODO: hmmm, it may be public domain in the USA but not Germany, where 70 years after author deaths rules, and Schrodinger died in 1961, so it may be up to 2031 in that country... messy stuff. There's also the question of wether copyright is was tranferred to AdP at publication or not.
An early English translation present at Collected Papers On Wave Mechanics by Deans (1928).
Contains formulas such as the Schrödinger equation solution for the hydrogen atom (1''):where:
In order for there to be numerical agreement, must have the value
, are the charge and mass of the electron
Quantum is getting hot in 2019, and even Ciro Santilli got a bit excited: quantum computing could be the next big thing.
No useful algorithm has been economically accelerated by quantum yet as of 2019, only useless ones, but the bets are on, big time.
To get a feeling of this, just have a look at the insane number of startups that are already developing quantum algorithms for hardware that doesn't/barely exists! quantumcomputingreport.com/players/privatestartup (archive). Some feared we might be in a bubble: Are we in a quantum computing bubble?
To get a basic idea of what programming a quantum computer looks like start by reading: Section "Quantum computing is just matrix multiplication".
Some people have their doubts, and that is not unreasonable, it might truly not work out. We could be on the verge of an AI winter of quantum computing. But Ciro Santilli feels that it is genuinely impossible to tell as of 2020 if something will work out or not. We really just have to try it out and see. There must have been skeptics before every single next big thing.
He's a bit lazy to explain why here, but Googling will be more than enough.
There is a risk it will fizzle and the bubble pop, like any revolution.
But recent developments are making it too exciting to ignore.
Theory that describes electrons and photons really well, and as Feynman puts it "accounts very precisely for all physical phenomena we have ever observed, except for gravity and nuclear physics" ("including the laughter of the crowd" ;-)).
Learning it is one of Ciro Santilli's main intellectual fetishes.
While Ciro acknowledges that QED is intrinsically challenging due to the wide range or requirements (quantum mechanics, special relativity and electromagnetism), Ciro feels that there is a glaring gap in this moneyless market for a learning material that follows the Middle Way as mentioned at: the missing link between basic and advanced. Richard Feynman Quantum Electrodynamics Lecture at University of Auckland (1979) is one of the best attempts so far, but it falls a bit too close to the superficial side of things, if only Feynman hadn't assumed that the audience doesn't know any mathematics...
The funny thing is that when Ciro Santilli's mother retired, learning it (or as she put it: "how photons and electrons interact") was also one of her retirement plans. She is a pharmacist by training, and doesn't know much mathematics, and her English was somewhat limited. Oh, she also wanted to learn how photosynthesis works (possibly not fully understood by science as that time, 2020). Ambitious old lady!!!
Experiments: quantum electrodynamics experiments.
Combines special relativity with more classical quantum mechanics, but further generalizing the Dirac equation, which also does that: Dirac equation vs quantum electrodynamics. The name "relativistic" likely doesn't need to appear on the title of QED because Maxwell's equations require special relativity, so just having "electro-" in the title is enough.
Before QED, the most advanced theory was that of the Dirac equation, which was already relativistic but TODO what was missing there exactly?
As summarized at: youtube.com/watch?v=_AZdvtf6hPU?t=305 Quantum Field Theory lecture at the African Summer Theory Institute 1 of 4 by Anthony Zee (2004):
- classical mechanics describes large and slow objects
- special relativity describes large and fast objects (they are getting close to the speed of light, so we have to consider relativity)
- classical quantum mechanics describes small and slow objects.
- QED describes objects that are both small and fast
That video also mentions the interesting idea that:Therefore, for small timescales, energy can vary a lot. But mass is equivalent to energy. Therefore, for small time scale, particles can appear and disappear wildly.
- in special relativity, we have the mass-energy equivalence
- in quantum mechanics, thinking along the time-energy uncertainty principle,
QED is the first quantum field theory fully developed. That framework was later extended to also include the weak interaction and strong interaction. As a result, it is perhaps easier to just Google for "Quantum Field Theory" if you want to learn QED, since QFT is more general and has more resources available generally.
Like in more general quantum field theory, there is on field for each particle type. In quantum field theory, there are only two fields to worry about:
- photon field
- electromagnetism field
Lecture 01 | Overview of Quantum Field Theory by Markus Luty (2013)
Source. This takes quite a direct approach, one cool thing he says is how we have to be careful with adding special relativity to the Schrödinger equation to avoid faster-than-light information.Theoretical framework on which quantum field theories are based, theories based on framework include:so basically the entire Standard Model
The basic idea is that there is a field for each particle particle type.
E.g. in QED, one for the electron and one for the photon: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/166709/are-electron-fields-and-photon-fields-part-of-the-same-field-in-qed.
And then those fields interact with some Lagrangian.
One way to look at QFT is to split it into two parts:Then interwined with those two is the part "OK, how to solve the equations, if they are solvable at all", which is an open problem: Yang-Mills existence and mass gap.
- deriving the Lagrangians of the Standard Model: why do symmetries such as SU(3), SU(2) and U(1) matter in particle physics?s. This is the easier part, since the lagrangians themselves can be understood with not very advanced mathematics, and derived beautifully from symmetry constraints
- the qantization of fields. This is the hard part Ciro Santilli is unable to understand, TODO mathematical formulation of quantum field theory.
There appear to be two main equivalent formulations of quantum field theory:
Quantum Field Theory visualized by ScienceClic English (2020)
Source. Gives one piece of possibly OK intuition: quantum theories kind of model all possible evolutions of the system at the same time, but with different probabilities. QFT is no different in that aspect.- youtu.be/MmG2ah5Df4g?t=209 describes how the spin number of a field is directly related to how much you have to rotate an element to reach the original position
- youtu.be/MmG2ah5Df4g?t=480 explains which particles are modelled by which spin number
Quantum Fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe by David Tong (2017)
Source. Boring, does not give anything except the usual blabla everyone knows from Googling:Quantum Field Theory: What is a particle? by Physics Explained (2021)
Source. Gives some high level analogies between high level principles of non-relativistic quantum mechanics and special relativity in to suggest that there is a minimum quanta of a relativistic quantum field.Ciro Santilli's favorites so far:
Bibliography of the biliograpy:
- physics.stackexchange.com/questions/8441/what-is-a-complete-book-for-introductory-quantum-field-theory "What is a complete book for introductory quantum field theory?"
- www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-book-to-learn-quantum-field-theory-on-your-own on Quora
- www.amazon.co.uk/Lectures-Quantum-Field-Theory-Ashok-ebook/dp/B07CL8Y3KY
Recommendations by friend P. C.:
- The Global Approach to Quantum Field Theory
- Lecture Notes | Geometry and Quantum Field Theory | Mathematics ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-238-geometry-and-quantum-field-theory-fall-2002/lecture-notes/
- Towards the mathematics of quantum field theory (Frederic Paugam)
- Path Integrals in Quantum Mechanics (J. Zinn–Justin)
- (B.Hall) Quantum Theory for Mathematicians (B.Hall)
- Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model (Schwartz)
- The Algebra of Grand Unified Theories (John C. Baez)
- quantum Field Theory for The Gifted Amateur by Tom Lancaster (2015)
Quantum field theory in a nutshell by Anthony Zee (2010) Updated 2024-12-15 +Created 1970-01-01
ISBN-13: 978-0691140346
lecture 1 mentions that this book is quick and dirty, as one might guess from the title. Ciro Santilli thinks he's gonna like this one.
First edition: from 2003, www.amazon.com/dp/0691010196, ISBN-13: 978-0691010199.
Summary:
Author: David Tong.
Number of pages circa 2021: 155.
It should also be noted that those notes are still being updated circa 2020 much after original publication. But without Git to track the LaTeX, it is hard to be sure how much. We'll get there one day, one day.
Some quotes self describing the work:
- Perhaps for this reason Ciro Santilli was not able to get as much as he'd out of those notes either. This is not to say that the notes are bad, just not what Ciro needed, much like P&S:This is a very clear and comprehensive book, covering everything in this course at the right level. To a large extent, our course will follow the first section of this book.
In this course we will not discuss path integral methods, and focus instead on canonical quantization.
A follow up course in the University of Cambridge seems to be the "Advanced QFT course" (AQFT, Quantum field theory II) by David Skinner: www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/dbs26/AQFT.html
Man-in-the-middle attack
quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/142/advantage-of-quantum-key-distribution-over-post-quantum-cryptography/25727#25727 Advantage of quantum key distribution over post-quantum cryptography has Ciro Santilli's comparison to classical encryption.
BB84 is a good first algorithm to look into.
Long story short:
- QKD allows you to generate shared keys without public-key cryptography. You can then use thses shared keys
- QKD requires authentication on a classical channel, exactly like a classical public-key cryptography forward secrecy would. The simplest way to do this is a with a pre-shared key, just like in classical public key cryptography. If that key is compromised at any point, your future messages can get man-in-the-middle'd, exactly like in classical cryptography.
QKD uses quantum mechanics stuff to allow sharing unsnoopable keys: you can detect any snooping and abort communication. Unsnoopability is guaranteed by the known laws of physics, up only to engineering imperfections.
Furthermore, it allows this key distribution without having to physically take a box by car somewhere: once the channel is established, e.g. optical fiber, you can just keep generating perfect keys from it. Otherwise it would be pointless, as you could just drive your one-time pad key every time.
However, the keys likely have a limited rate of generation, so you can't just one-time pad the entire message, except for small text messages. What you would then do is to use the shared key with symmetric encryption.
Therefore, this setup usually ultimately relies on the idea that we believe that symmetric encryption is safer than , even though there aren't mathematical safety proofs of either as of 2020.
Quantum mechanics is quite a broad term. Perhaps it is best to start approaching it from the division into:
- non-relativistic quantum mechanics: obviously the simpler one, and where you should start
- relativistic quantum mechanics: more advanced, and arguably "less useful"
Key experiments that could not work without quantum mechanics: Section "Quantum mechanics experiment".
Mathematics: there are a few models of increasing precision which could all be called "quantum mechanics":
Ciro Santilli feels that the largest technological revolutions since the 1950's have been quantum related, and will continue to be for a while, from deeper understanding of chemistry and materials to quantum computing, understanding and controlling quantum systems is where the most interesting frontier of technology lies.
Ciro Santilli finds it interesting that radioactive decay basically kickstarted the domain of nuclear physics by essentially providing a natural particle accelerator from a chunk of radioactive element.
The discovery process was particularly interesting, including Henri Becquerel's luck while observing phosphorescence, and Marie Curie's observation that the uranium ore were more radioactive than pure uranium, and must therefore contain other even more radioactive substances, which lead to the discovery of polonium (half-life 138 days) and radium (half-life 1600 years).
Ciro Santilli appreciates this concept of "remembering the suffering of others" a lot due to Ciro Santilli's self perceived compassionate personality and Ciro Santilli's cheapness.
Ciro Santilli considered it before he stopped using file managers altogether, it is not bad.
Has Serial wire debug debug. Why would you ever get one without unless you are a clueless newbie like Ciro Santilli?!?!