24.10.2006 11:23

Over the last 5 month I have been constantly complaining about my job. I stumbled from one crisis into the next and its ongoing. There is litterally nothing here I really like.
Since I came here I am supposed to work on stuff I don't really understand. All my supervisor's life is packed with three keywords Random matrix theory, eigenvalue distributions and - regime (Compton wavelength of the pion is larger than the volume). I don't have all these things clear, especially not how they are correlated. I believe in the - regime low lying eigenvalues of whatever fermion operator you use have to be distributed like some random matrix theory ensemble. And beyond that regime? Do they have to be distributed like this everywhere? But why would we then bother about QCD? I allways saw this -regime as some kind of auxiliary strange regime which has some properties which you can use to exploit to get results which are relevant in other regimes, but in itself it is a bit sick that regime, what is this, a "pion" that overlaps the box it is simulated in, nothing really physical, not really a pion, is it?
At the moment I am supposed to look at some eigenvalue distributions of the Wilson - Dirac operator, low lying eigenmodes which supposedly have to do something with topology and this again with chirality. But what if the operator is not chiral at all? It has the worst chiral properties you find in lattice gauge theory. What about cutoff effects, Aoki phases all the stuff everybody else out there in the lattice world talks about?
If you simulate in the -regime don't you then have to choose your parameters, , lattice size etc. in a certain way, such that you end up in this regime? I did not generate the data I am working with and I did not check it really is in the regime, I just blindly trust the other people...
All I do is: I take the operator, look at the eigenvalues, twist them around and hopefully find that they are beautifully distributed. Why? they have to, they are beautifully distributed, why? they have to, they are beautifully distributed. why? they have to, they are beautif...

I am sick of not understanding what I do. So I look at it and see a very boring pointless thing. And there is so much interesting physics going on out there, elsewhere.