John Baez: Things that  Schmotons  Schmotons

Introduction

Michael Weiss

These notes are derived from the "Photons, Shmotons'' thread that ran on sci.physics.research in the summer of 1997 -- later corrected to "Photons, Schmotons". As editor, I've wielded a pretty free hand, correcting minor errors, imposing a consistent set of conventions, rearranging the order and condensing the discussion in places. On the other hand, I've kept some of the false starts and more rough-hewn derivations, even when slicker approaches appear later. I've omitted material that distracted from the main thrust of the argument. Some of the omitted material has a natural place in a sequel; watch those photons on s.p.r!

These notes are also available in PDF, Postscript and LaTeX formats. The HTML version you see here just has worse typesetting.

There is also a second group of notes, but currently available in GIF, PDF, Postscript, and LaTeX formats, not HTML.

The sections here usually correspond to posts; the original author is given in the title, but I've chosen the section titles.

3/10/1998