23 questions linked to/from The Role of Rigor
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### Are derivations of physical laws less important than the laws themselves? [closed]

The proportionality between the kinetic energy of gas molecules and temperature is a well-known result. This is usually shown by considering a cubical box containing an ideal gas, and postulating that ...
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### How important is mathematical proof in physics?

How important are proofs in physics? If something is mathematically proven to follow from something we know is true, does it still require experimental verification? Are there examples of things that ...
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### Is there a way to justify perturbation theory in QFT?

I can accept that some problems do require a perturbation theory approach to be solved. The development of perturbation theory is perfectly rigorous. So at first, even though many people say that no ...
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### What does it mean for a QFT to not be well-defined?

It is usually said that QED, for instance, is not a well-defined QFT. It has to be embedded or completed in order to make it consistent. Most of these arguments amount to using the renormalization ...
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### The Role of Rigor II

The purpose of this question is to supplement an earlier question The Role of Rigor and to ask about the role of mathematical rigor in physics. In order to formulate a question that can be answered, ...
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### Set theories used in mathematical physical theories

For most theorems, this is unimportant - a typical problem will have the same solutions in NFU, ZFC or some other theory, since said theories got popular precisely because they give pretty much the ...
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### Rigorous mathematical formalism of particle physics

Can anyone provide me with a rigorous mathematical definition of the fundamental particles (all fundamental bosons and fermions), reflecting the analogy of action of groups with interaction of ...
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### Trajectories piecewise smooth?

In my studies of calculus and real analysis I have found the proofs of several theorems, commonly used in physics, such as those concerning the conservativity of fields, for example like If \$\...
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### Delta functional in path integrals

In a few articles dealing with path integral quantization I came across some calculations where apparently identities of the form \int (\mathcal{D}\Phi)\, \delta(-\partial_0\Phi+j)\,\,...
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### Is rigorous functional analysis useful for theoretical physics? [duplicate]

I'm an undergraduate physics without much quantum mechanics at all under my belt. I'm studying functional analysis, and I want to know whether or not this will be useful for me in theoretical physics ...
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### Using intuition to understand physics concepts, how and when to let that need for intuition go? [closed]

Those of us who grew up solving Newtonian mechanics, electrostatics, and calculus of 1-3 variables problems developed good intuition for understanding simple concepts. This helped me condition a ...
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### Selfstudying math with rigour is useful for a physics undergrad who want be a theoretical physicist (String theory, quantum gravity)? [closed]

When I say "math" I'm referring specifically to Topology, Differential Geometry and Group Theory. I've seen some colleagues studying such mathematical topics only superficially, i.e in group theory, ...
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### Is mathematical rigour irrelevant in most physics fields? [duplicate]

Are mathematical notions like closed sets, limits of sequences, measures, and function spaces basically irrelevant in the day to day work of a physicist? Naturally, such concepts are the foundations ...