User talk:Laussy

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Please do not hesitate to comment on whatever seems fit related to me and my contributions to Wikipedia. My replies are in dark green.

Hello. An article already exists at exciton (most entries are created with their singular form), perhaps you can merge your article with the existing one? I would attempt it, but, well, let's just say physics (let alone theoretical physics) isn't exactly my subject :). -- Notheruser 17:15 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I am sorry I introduced inadvertently the plural for a page already existing. But since my excitons was not pointing to exciton I thought the page did not exist. Since linking with the plural redirects to existing non-plural page, I thought the creation process was working likewise.

I've been following some of the threads off the home page, and I have to say that your physics articles all share an unfortunate property -- they don't say anything about what they are actually about.

For instance, the article on coherent state is not understandable to anyone without some QM background. You should state clearly and suscinctly in your first paragraph a broad overview of the topic and the topic space the term comes from. For instance...

Coherent space is a physicsl term used in quantum mechanics to describe...

The current article has no definition, it rests entirely on reference to other equally non-defined articles. Cohernent space is a Fock space is a Hilbert space which is a...

a Hilbert space is an inner product space that is complete with respect to the norm defined by the inner product

What the hell does that mean?

I have to stress that the wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a game magazine|movie review site|physics textbook. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE!


Thanks for you concerns.

You will agree that without a QM background it might be difficult to understand the deeper and most subtle corners of the field, and that if everything is to remain at the level of the uninitiated, then most material of human knowledge does not belong to this encyclopedia. I think that you and me agree that the purpose of Wikipedia is to address from simple to extremely advanced, and not just whatever who that can read, can understand.

However I agree with you that whenever possible, some introductory material must be included to allow the layman in as far as possible. I tried much to include vivid, physically intuitive meaning in my article. In the coherent state you will notice that I wrote it is the most classical state allowed by quantum physics, since it has lowest uncertainty in its conjuguate variables, and it can be located in the complex plane as the position in the phase space of the quantum oscillator and also Coherent states describe coherent fields, especially they describe classical fields since those are usually understood as sine waves. This is therefore the quantum state of light emitted by an ideal laser. It is a state with undeterminate number of photon. Also you criticize my Fock space article, but then please refer to the previous version and tell me if you think it was better? It actually consists only of pure mathematical definitions. No to mention that also there I tried to include some intuitively sounding explanations but more importantly, I gave a clear mathematical definition. The previous material from the mathematical point of view was not only sounding pedantic, as you can believe my articles are, but it was so vague that it was close to just false. At least to whoever has some background in QM, I believe my article now brings an accurate description and explanation, whereas previously not only it was unclear to the layman, it was also unclear to the expert. To end with, most advanced mathematical or physics articles I read were in the same format as mine. The fact that you reproach to me the Hilbert space article in which I did not edit even a comma proves this true.

I know your comment is in the intent of making the encyclopedia better and that your bitter tone shows how important the project is to you. I will try to move around some of the "vague, introductory, tutorial" material towards the beginning so that one can grasp what it is about without perusing the whole content, although in some cases it can severely affect the coherence of the article structure, since the most important and that should appear first and be emphasized is the exact scientifical meaning, not the approximate, intuitive, everybody's vague understanding. Thanks.