Welcome to the philosophical corner of your Part III course. We meet in DAMTP room MR5 for 90 minutes each Tuesday at 14:00 (UK time). Weekly readings and handouts will be linked below. Induction slides with a description of past Part III essays for this course available here. Contact the lecturers if you would like to join the email list: Jeremy Butterfield (jb56@cam.ac.uk) and Bryan W. Roberts (b.w.roberts@lse.ac.uk).
This course is non-examinable, but does offer two Part iii Essays. You can see them introduced on Tuesday, 1 February from 1-2pm in MR5:
Jeremy Butterfield Zoom Room Office Hours Normal office hours for this part iii course took place during term time were Thurdays from 15:30-16:30 British Time via Zoom. Please email (jb56@cam.ac.uk) to attend. (The old Zoom room link is here.)
Past Recordings Past videos will be identified where relevant in the schedule below. Each week's lecture recording will be available via this link as well.
Try this philosophy of physics reading list (docx) to get started. Some further helpful introductory readings for this include:
And some further resources in the philosophy of physics:
| Wk | Date | Topic | Handout |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25 Jan 2022 | Gathering Threads: From finite to infinite systems | Jeremy's Handout and highlighted version. Ancillary: Handout from last term on quantisation of finite linear systems |
| 2 | 01 Feb 2022 | Algebras, representations and GNS | Jeremy's Handout: GNS and all that: a rough guide to algebras and states (and highlighted version) |
| 3 | 08 Feb 2022 | Conceptual foundations of the Unruh effect | Bryan's handout. Ancillary: Bryan's notes on unitary equivalence. |
| 4 | 15 Feb 2022 | Spacelike correlations, including Reeh Schlieder | Jeremy's Handout (and with highlights). Ancillary readings: Clifton and Halvorson (2001), Landsman (2006), Landsman (1996). |
| 5 | 22 Feb 2022 | The Unruh Effect for Philosophers | Jeremy's Handout. Ancillary readings: Clifton and Halvorson (2001), Earman (2011), Unruh (2001), Unruh and Wald (2017) |
| 6 | 01 Mar 2022 | The Hawking Effect: Part 1 | Handout. Ancillary reading: Bekenstein (1973), Wald 1975, Kay and Wald (1991) |
| 7 | 08 Mar 2022 | The Hawking Effect: Part 2 | Jeremy's Handout (Coming Soon) |
| 8 | 15 Mar 2022 | Acoustic Black Holes: The logic of analogue experimentation | Bryan's Handout Optional further reading: Unruh (1981) Experimental black hole evaporation? |
| Wk | Date | Topic | Handout |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12 Oct 2021 | Hilbert space review | Jeremy's Handout / Highlighted Version + Past Part iii Essays |
| 2 | 19 Oct 2021 | Operator algebras, states, and complex structures | Jeremy's Handout / Highlighted Version |
| 3 | 26 Oct 2021 | Time reversal symmetry violation | Reversing Time's Arrow, Chapter 7 only. (Slide presentation.) Optional ancillary reading: Roberts (2015) and Ashtekar (2015) |
| 4 | 02 Nov 2021 | Background for quantisation | Jeremy's Handout (and highlighted version). Ancillary reading: Landsman (2005) 'Between Classical and Quantum' |
| 5 | 09 Nov 2021 | Feynman's view of antimatter | Reversing Time's Arrow, Chapter 8 through Section 8.2 only. Optional ancillary reading: Greaves (2010), Wallace (2009), and Kay and Wald (1991) (Appendix A). |
| 6 | Mon, 15 Nov 2021 | One particle structures and Segal quantisation | Jeremy's Handout. Note Schedule Change: This week we meet on MONDAY not Tuesday, at 14:05 in MR5. |
| 7 | Tue, 23 Nov 2021 | Matter, Antimatter and the Lorentz group | Reversing Time's Arrow, Chapter 8, Sections 8.3 to end only. Optional ancillary reading: Swanson (2019). |
| 8 | Mon, 29 Nov 2021 | Quantum Objects | Jeremy's handout. Note Schedule Change: This week we meet on MONDAY not Tuesday, at 14:05 in MR5. |