In his latest paper, Wen still is prisoner of the shortcomings of his ideas. He still uses the term "topological orders" with a plural "s", where there is no such plural neither in the English language nor in any abstract way; he still is fascinated by phase transitions instead of the real, inhomogeneous world; he still only talks about fermions and bosons, but never about quarks and leptons; he still talks about many dimensions, but avoids the issue of spin.
Wen is smart and driven, but he is on the wrong path. He has missionary zeal - for the wrong religion.
What a pity for such a smart man.
Topological order in Wen's works is defined as a "pattern of long-range quantum entanglement". This type of order is absent in the classical Landau picture of phase transitions. So, in this context, Wen uses the word "orders" as plural for "pattern".
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, it is a bit confusing for people who are not familiar with his terminology.
For a quick review of topological order, Wikipedia has a fairly good entry.
Ervin,
ReplyDeleteI like Wen's work but I dislike his language, and I am sad that he does not work towards the standard model. He is enamoured with math, and dropped every idea or attempt related to the real world. Thus he has dropped out of the race for a TOE. But why? He could do so much more!