by stochastician
2 subcomments
- If, like me, you're not a real mathematician but suffered through linear algebra and differential equations, you can still totally understand this stuff! I started off teaching myself differential geometry but ultimately had far more success with lie theory from a matrix groups perspective. I highly recommend:
https://www.amazon.com/Lie-Groups-Introduction-Graduate-Math...
and
https://bookstore.ams.org/text-13
My friends were all putnam nerds in college and I was not, and I assumed this math was all beyond me, but once you get the linear algebra down it's great!
- What I always miss from this introductory abridged explanations, and what makes the connection between Lie groups and algebras ('infinitesimal' groups) really useful, is that the exponential process is a universal mechanism, and provides a natural way to find representations and operators (eg Lie commutator, the BCH formula) where the group elements can be transformed through algebraic manipulations and vice-versa. That discovery offers a unified treatment of concepts in number theory, differential geometry, operator theory, quantum theory and beyond.
by qf_community
0 subcomment
- We are running a live online bootcamp, Group Theory 360: https://quantumformalism.academy/group-theory-360.
Lie groups are central part of the bootcamp where we will cover their applications beyond physics including geometric deep learning!
by moleperson
3 subcomments
- > For instance, the fact that the laws of physics are the same today as they were yesterday and will be tomorrow — a symmetry known as time translation symmetry, represented by the Lie group consisting of the real numbers — implies that the universe’s energy must be conserved, and vice versa. “I think, even now, it’s a very surprising result,” Alekseev said.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the implication here but wouldn’t it be much more surprising if that weren’t the case?
by user3939382
0 subcomment
- Correct. I have all of this worked out if anyone wants to check my work. I validated it through John Baez.
by YetAnotherNick
3 subcomments
- Such a bad (AI written?) article. These kind of introduction to advanced topics feels like how to draw an owl tutorial where they spent so much time diving into what group is.
> The group of all rotations of a ball in space, known to mathematicians as SO(3), is a six-dimensional tangle of spheres and circles.
This is wrong. It's 3D, not 6D. In fact SO(3) is simple to visualize as movement of north pole to any point on the ball + rotation along that.
- I hate statements like this due to their imprecision and their contribution to making mathematics difficult to learn.
> Though they’re defined by just a few rules, groups help illuminate an astonishing range of mysteries.
An astute reader at this point will go look up the definition of groups and come away completely mystified how they illuminate anything (hint: they do not).
A better statement is that many things that illuminate a wide range of mysteries form groups. By themselves, the group laws regarding these things tell you very little. It's the various individual or collective behaviors of certain groups that illuminate these areas.
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