Thanks for all the replies. This was so fast. You guys are great. I will look into the references pointed out by Ondřej and try to narrow down a concrete problem. What Matthew said is exactly my idea. Working on a physics related problem will keep me interested and motivated to keep going, but I will be thinking of implementing constructs in a general way to be used in other problems. I think I will either focus on something tensor related (Gamma matrices or some type of functionality which automatically manipulates indices in different group representations), or maybe go with the Feynman diagram suggestion of Ondřej. As Stefan pointed out The Feynman diagram visualization is not really generalizable, but is still very important for a big community. There might be some general topology constructs there as well.
Right now I started working on an issue to try and fix before the deadline. I am looking at https://github.com/sympy/sympy/issues/7134. There have been no replies for some months. Should I just post my thought in that thread and see if anyone jumps in. I think I have an idea of a basic (probably not very good, but hopefully working) resolution. At this point I am just trying to have something to submit as a pull request, but I am a little stuck on some technical details. I know its a simple issue, but I have to start somewhere right. Thanks again for all the comments! On Thursday, March 20, 2014 2:34:24 PM UTC-4, Matthew wrote: > > My thoughts on what's written so far are different from Ondrej's. I am > less excited by physics applications and more excited by the tools > necessary to enable the expression of physics applications. The extent to > which a domain specific project like this can be broken into a generally > applicable component (some mathy or algorithmic bit) and a domain specific > application (some physics thing) is good. This increases the applicability > and relevance of a summer project to a wider audience. > > > On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Ondřej Čertík > <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 12:17 PM, Ondřej Čertík >> <[email protected]<javascript:>> >> wrote: >> > Hi Peter, >> > >> > I read through your ideas. First of all, I started SymPy as a >> > theoretical physics student myself, >> > and I wanted to automate the General Relativity as well as high energy >> > QFT calculations. I am still >> > very interested in that, but there are a lot of tough problems and >> > parts that need to be in place. >> > >> > You need to be able to do integrals, handle potentially large >> > formulas, tensor manipulation and simplification >> > (e.g. gamma matrices), and so on. It's not easy at all, but we've done >> > a long progress since the time I started >> > SymPy in 2007 or so. Most of these things are in place, in some form. >> > In order to efficiently handle very large >> > expressions, I started developing CSymPy about half a year ago >> > (https://github.com/certik/csympy), this >> > will come very handy as well for these applications. >> > >> > The best way to get some ideas of what can be done is to look into >> > existing packages, they are pretty much >> > all in Mathematica. In fact, most theoretical physicist just use >> > Mathematica. And let's be frank, it's currently the >> > best if you just care about getting the results. There is also GiNaC >> > (http://www.ginac.de/) that can be used for some of the >> > high energy stuff, but CSymPy can now do pretty similar things, >> > sometimes faster. So there is: >> > >> > http://www.feyncalc.org/ >> > >> > there are all these various things people wrote for Mathematica: >> > >> > @article{huber2012crasydse, >> > title={CrasyDSE: A framework for solving Dyson--Schwinger equations}, >> > author={Huber, Markus Q and Mitter, Mario}, >> > journal={Computer Physics Communications}, >> > volume={183}, >> > number={11}, >> > pages={2441--2457}, >> > year={2012}, >> > publisher={Elsevier} >> > } >> > >> > @article{huber2012algorithmic, >> > title={Algorithmic derivation of functional renormalization group >> > equations and Dyson--Schwinger equations}, >> > author={Huber, Markus Q and Braun, Jens}, >> > journal={Computer Physics Communications}, >> > volume={183}, >> > number={6}, >> > pages={1290--1320}, >> > year={2012}, >> > publisher={Elsevier} >> > } >> > >> > But the advantage of SymPy is that the whole stack is opensource, and >> > SymPy is just a library, so it better integrates >> > with things like IPython Notebook and you can create the whole >> > application in it. For example, the physics.quantum >> > module has some good stuff, that plays together much better than >> > packages in Mathematica. Another great application is PyDy. >> > >> > So it would be really nice to have the project that you describe. You >> > should have a look at work done by Francesco Bonazzi >> > regarding the gamma matrices: >> > >> > https://github.com/Upabjojr >> > https://github.com/sympy/sympy/pull/2601 >> > >> > He has lots of PRs, closed and open. It's nontrivial. And those are >> > just the gamma matrices. I think Francesco's goal >> > could be summarized by your proposal, and he's done many months worth >> > of work on it already. So the scope is just huge. >> > So there is plenty of things that could be done for the summer. >> > >> > One of the things is for example just the Feynman diagrams generator >> > for various Lagrangians. I am sure there must be some >> > packages that do that, but it'd be nice to integrate this with SymPy >> > and create nice IPython Notebooks that generate all the correct >> > diagrams, for example from Peskin & Schroeder. This will be good for >> >> I.e. this would involve some classes for representation of Feynman >> diagrams, >> that would also know how to nicely visualize themselves in the IPython >> Notebook, >> and then code that generates them for various interactions. >> And so on. >> >> For other ideas, I have some derivations of various things here: >> >> http://theoretical-physics.net/dev/src/quantum/qft.html#standard-model >> >> that could be automated. For example one can reformulate the problem using >> Green's functions and so on. >> >> Ondrej >> >> > pedagogical reasons, as well as computations. In general, >> > good applications in my opinion are providing automatic symbolic >> > solutions to various exercises from books. >> > >> > Another thing is of course Regularization and Renormalization. >> > >> > I would suggest you to figure out something, that can be finished >> > during a summer and that would provide something useful, >> > on it's own. So that you can create nice examples out of it. Then you >> > can continue working on some other things after the summer. >> > >> > Ondrej >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "sympy" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected] <javascript:>. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected] <javascript:> >> . >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sympy. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sympy/CADDwiVCdh9JHMZ%3DQeUMK1-xrcXhjOY4JraWcs5OmnrzsJnZRZg%40mail.gmail.com >> . >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sympy. 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