Martin

it's too much bother to have two threads about the recent decline in string-type research, so I'm going to let this one drift off and concentrate on the one where the citations are the primary focus----unless someone decides to continue this one edit: it now looks like the decline might be as little as 13 percent from 2002 to 2003 and (looking at the 2003 preprints as a leading indicator) only about 13 percent from 2003 to 2004 so it could only amount to about 25 percent drop spread over two years still significant but much less than it looked at first

these are papers published in peer-reviewed journals I think ADS stands for "astrophysics data system" anyway it is NASA ADS and the site is at harvard.edu there are some boxes to check at the top depending on what type of journal you want the papers to be from I checked "Physics/Geophysics" and "Astronomy/Planetary" to get as many as possible anyone who wants can reproduce these numbers http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&aut_xct=NO&aut_logic=OR&author=&sim_query=YES&start_mon=&start_year=2002&end_mon=&end_year=2002&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=brane&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&min_score=&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&sort=SCORE&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PHY&aut_xct=NO&aut_logic=OR&author=&sim_query=YES&start_mon=&start_year=2003&end_mon=&end_year=2003&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=brane&nr_to_return=100&start_nr=1&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&min_score=&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&sort=SCORE&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1 these two should get you the papers saying "brane" for the two years 2002 and 2003----it should show a 13 percent decline if you say "string" it is not so meaningful because you get papers about strings of ASCII characters and other kinds of strings having nothing to do with string theory---all mixed in. but nothing like that happens with "brane", so it is a better way of keeping track of the trends. there's a 13 percent decline from 2002 to 2003, in the first two categories and somewhat more in the other two this seems more reasonable to me than what i saw earlier in the Spires database for 2003---that must still be under construction for comparison here are the Stanford/SLAC spires numbers for stringy publications 2002 and 2003. the number for 2003 may not be final, they might be still cataloging, this is the only explanation I can think of for its being so much less than that for 2002: 2002: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+2002&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 2003: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+2003&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= lately when i looked it showed a roughly 60 percent decline but that will presumably be reduced as they get closer to completing the catalog job

A day or so ago I learned of another database for publications in physics and related areas http://adsabs.harvard.edu/physics_service.html One of the sort options in this database is by citation-number: it ranks the papers it finds based on how many other papers cite them as reference. A preliminary search hitting on occurrences of the words brane, superstring, M-theory, D-brane in the paper's abstract gave these numbers for 2000 thru 2003. year brane superstring M-theory D-brane 2000 757 124 117 106 2001 969 131 113 114 2002 921 153 134 108 2003 800 133 113 89 decline 13% 13% 16% 18% I put in the percentage decline in the last year---2002 to 2003

I want to call attention to motionmountain's "fun with physics" thread in this forum. his name is Christoph Schiller and he has a 1000page online physics fun-book. One thing christoph has is a chapter on things like the "strongest possible force" in nature. Basically the idea is, we all know that in a certain sense c is a natural speed limit. It is the fastest possible speed. (if you define terms properly) so is there an upperbound on the (rest)mass of a particle or is there an upperbound on the power any system can deliver or on force? or is there a smallest length that can be distinguished by measurement etc etc. these questions are kind of in the commonplace zeitgeist vernacular----well Christoph has some words about them I am very pleased with your response, Atheist. thanks for replying. You ask about my own history with these ideas. years back when I first heard of planck time, length, mass it occurred to me to calculate what the force unit is that goes with those natural units and I calculated that it was c4/G and I immediately asked myself if that force, which is E40 tons, has some extremal property after all c is the planck unit of speed---one planck length per planck unit of time----and several planck units do seem to be extremal (smallest measureable distance etc) so I did a little back of envelope calculation with black holes. At that time I put the singularity of one on the event horizon of the other and got IIRC the answer of c4/4G I dont think order-of-unity factors matter in such a rough conceptual calculation, so I dont think the exact answer is important. Only that if two BH are falling towards one another then as long as they are separate entities one can assign a momentum to each one and one can in principle observe their acceleration and from the change in momentum one can define a force (a rate of change of momentum) so it is interesting to know what is the maximum rate of change of momentum they can have up to the point that one can no longer distinguish them as separate entities this is not a mathematically rigorous thing---what does separate mean?---but it is a nice backofenvelope calculation that gives an idea of natures extreme force I think your idea of putting two electrons close together to feel their extreme repulsion is also interesting. But I do not think you can achieve E40 tons of force this way because of things like the HUP and the compton wavelength of the electron---or whatever particle you are imagining. when they get too close they are no longer distinguishable or they simply cannot exist that close together---something breaks. so i think you will find that you get a bigger force if you do it my way. now what Christoph does, I dont know! I didnt read his book yet. his chapters take a while to download. maybe someone who has read the Schiller book can tell us. I also am not sure your "triangle" idea works to give a larger force. whatever mass you have it may be most effective to concentrate it in just two BHs-----that may be the setup that gives the highest rate of change of momentum Glad to see you trying these ideas out! Maybe you will come up with a physical system in which there is a stronger force than what Christoph says namely c^4/4G

here is a simplified calculation of the force between two black holes that someone may have already done at SFN----it may not be new to you but it has an interesting result that connects to Christoph Schiller's "fun with physics" thread Two equal mass BH of the simplest kind (non-rotating electrically neutral), say each with mass M the schwarzschild radius of each is [math]R = \frac{2GM}{c^2}[/math] so naively the closest they could get together is [math]D = 2R = \frac{4GM}{c^2}[/math] and then by newton's law of gravitation the force of attraction between them is [math]F = \frac{GM^2}{D^2}[/math] but [math]D^2 = \frac{16G^2 M^2}{c^4}[/math] so the M cancels out of the formula for the force and one gets [math]F = \frac{c^4}{16G}[/math] this is 1/16 of a kind of benchmark force sometimes called the Planck force because it is the unit of force corresponding to planck unit mass and unit length and unit time etc. what you call it doesnt matter. it is [math]F_p = \frac{c^4}{G}[/math] and it is around 1040 tons I havent looked at the individual pages of Christoph's book but i took a look at his TOC just now and I see that he proves that the strongest possible force in nature is a quarter of this. that is interesting and makes sense if the two black holes were approaching each other at relativistic speed they could get closer than I said and experience a stronger force of attraction (my calculation is not the best one can do, so one should be able to get it to be better than 1/16 and maybe 1/4 is right) but aside from factors like 1/4 and 1/16, here we have a handle on the strongest force of attraction between two distinct objects---the instant right before they merge into one.

I believe that I can calculate the force between two stars which form a binary pair. to make it simple suppose i observe that both stars have the same constant speed v (they are in circular orbit) I should be able to calculate the force of attraction between them only knowing v. How about this? 4v4/G [math] F = \frac{4v^4}{G}[/math] should we check it? anyway Tyson asks if there is some situation where one can calculate force from acceleration alone. And I believe the answer is yes. here is a case where one can calculate force from speed alone of course mass is part of the picture, but the actual calculation never bothers to extract it I need to check this, might be making a dumb error. and I have to go right now. but will come back and check and correct mistakes if necessary ------------------------ I'm back let's check it you are observing a binary star system, which is stationary wrt you, it isnt going anywhere, and you see the two stars have constant velocity, for simplicity it is the same velocity v for each star Let's say the velocity is 10,000 meters per second I claim that you can calculate the force between the two stars by raising that to the fourth power, dividing by G, and multiplying by 4----that will give the force in Newtons. In metric units G is 6.67 E-11 so the newtons is going to be 4E16 divided by 6.67E-11 very roughly to order of magnitude E27 newtons. I think that is right---you can calculate the force just from the speed in that situation

thanks Tesseract, then I hope one of the moderators does delete that "accidentally posted twice" thing in the meantime since you are at a military base in antarctica there is a very good chance that you like differential equations so here is a neat thing about this one: [math](\frac{a'}{a})^2 = \frac{8\pi G}{3}\rho[/math] this thing [math]\frac{a'}{a}[/math] (you may have learned this already but in case not) is the same as the Hubble parameter H(t) which is the percentage rate of expansion of space or the fractional rate that is, it is the increase in the scale factor a(t) divided by the scalefactor, which makes it a fractional rate of increase in distances which is what the Hubble parameter is! so this equation, which is the basic Friedmann for the spatially flat case, actually says [math](H)^2 = \frac{8\pi G}{3}\rho[/math] I dont know if I am saying things you already know. I like this because it is so simple. A lot of things are hard in cosmology but this is beautifully simple. It says that the density at this moment (assuming space is flat) is related to the square of the Hubble parameter, whatever it is at this moment. and also that the two have been related all along. the density has been declining as the U expanded and at the same time the Hubble parameter has been declining, because one is essentially equal to the square of the other after all [math] \frac{8\pi G}{3}[/math] is just some constant do you like this kind of thing? I am a fan of cosmology

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?p=56563#post56563 here is a link to a SFN sticky that has the Friedmann equations and says what the letters in them stand for in the simple flat case that most of what you read refers to the main Fr. eqn. boils down to [math](\frac{a'}{a})^2 = \frac{8\pi G}{3}\rho [/math]

I asked first. I would like to know some other takes on it. but since you turned the question around I will try to get my thoughts in order about this. it's a really big development involving not just string but the whole of HEP a huge move seems to be under way of people out of HEP (particularly string) and into astrophysics the spires database has had to expand its definition of what is HEP to include more astrophysics simply to keep its numbers up or as they say "since so many of us have switched over, we will change the definition" so the map of research areas is changing and people are changing their career lines. ------------------- another thing is history----up to mid 80s HEP was on a roll theorists would predict something and a few weeks or months later experimentalists would find it since mid 80s that hasnt been happening---the difference is like day and night people like Witten talk about HEP getting "off track" he gave a talk at Fermilab in 2003 which is not available at the usual arXiv site where he said such and such result would maybe put HEP "back on track". It was a hopeful vision for the future. IIRC he said little or nothing about string. I found the talk in the Fermilab library and will get you the link if you want. ------------------- or if anyone shows up at SFN who IS interested in current developments in HEP and reasons for the sharp decline of string research ------------------ basically I dont see any obvious answers, but a lot of interconnected things one problem is the field is overhyped and experienced a sort of stock market bubble---tulip mania among the theorists ------------------- this quote from Brian Greene seems relevant (although certain of his statements may be misleading or "premature") I will let you know if more thoughts occur to me.

Skye I only found out the drop-off was that big today, or yesterday, cant remember. It took me by surprise. Last year Lubos Motl, a fervent string believer, was moaning about the decline in string research on SPR (sci.physics.research) but I didnt know how big a decline he was talking about. there was a long thread on SPR about "the break-up of string theory" But those were insiders talking. Today it was like the other shoe falling from that "the string theory crack-up" thread on SPR. What I want is a fresh perspective. I would like to know what other people think about it. If you really want I can hunt up some danger-signal quotes from string leaders. I am reluctant to because it would be an unknown amount of work to find the quotes. There is a recognized crisis in the field having to do with lots of technical things: the 10100 vacuum states the lack of real predictions to test the theory with the anthropic principle the unrealized goal (declared in 1992 by Witten) of background independence which Tom Banks has now said is a chimera. Lubos Motl has made a serious statement about the urgency of background independence----but it has proven very difficult to get anything like the real thing in a string context. David Gross has scoffed at braneworld cosmology. Lubos Motl warns that string cosmology is "premature". there seems to be a small number of serious people who reject the anthropic principle and want solutions to core problems----but are making little or no progress----and a larger number who have run off in speculative and self-indulgent directions. Oh, and there are the critics like Peter Woit, with his website "Not Even Wrong". To paraphrase his essay, since Stringy theories make no predictions by which they could be either verified or nullified, they dont mean anything. String is not even wrong. Instead it's just some elaborate mathematical fairyland. He says cut the funding till they get a version that is able to make some hard numerical predictions. Something that has, in the past, been expected of physical theories. (I should say Witten, TomBanks, David Gross, Lubos Motl are the stalwarts. Their misgivings expressed indoors to colleagues are most the worrisome symptoms. The outside critics like Woit are another business.) ------------ this is just off the top of my head. basically, i know there is an intellectual crisis in string a crisis of really major proportions. But i knew that already last year. What I did not know or expect was such a big drop in papers. 70 percent is huge. I am still wondering if there is some problem with the numbers. something about the spires database that I'm not taking into account.

Here's the Spires data on that sharp drop-off in numbers of string papers Listing is by hardcopy publication year, not arXiv pre-print year, so the crest comes a year or so later than it does with preprints. Here are the results of a search for string, brane, and M-theory papers which means using the Spires keywords string model membrane model matrix model (spires librarians use a definite set of keywords and tag articles in the database) [edit: they are still cataloging 2003 papers, so the total number is changing---substantial drop-off but not clear what it will be] I have put the links afterwards so you can check for yourself directly with the spires search engine String, brane, M-theory related papers by publication year 1986 89 1987 136 1988 324 1989 725 1990 1092 1991 936 1992 853 1993 761 1994 864 1995 976 1996 1069 1997 1427 1998 1383 1999 1498 2000 1642 2001 1559 2002 1677 2003 [edit: unclear what its going to be] -------- this is by putting fin k string model or matrix model or membrane model and date 1992 into spires 1986: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1986&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1987: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1987&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1988: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1988&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1989: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1989&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1990: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1990&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1991: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1991&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1992: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1992&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1993: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1993&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1994: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1994&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1995: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1995&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1996: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1996&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1997: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1997&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1998: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1998&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 1999: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+1999&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 2000: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+2000&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 2001: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+2001&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 2002: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+2002&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= 2003: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=fin+k+string+model+or+matrix+model+or+membrane+model+and+date+2003&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= [edit: the 2003 number has been changing, try it for yourself]

research quantity is different from quality I would like this thread to focus solely on the number of papers published each year I want to highlight the 70 percent drop, from 2002 to 2003, which I think is amazing----I just learned about it today----and I would like to get other people's ideas as to why this may have happened There is also the issue of citations. A kind of measure of quality. The decline in quality is a different issue and could have different explanations. I will go to the Citations thread and edit it to remove discussions of quantity.

According to the Spires HEP database there has been a drop-off in string-related research publication. edit: they havent finished cataloging the 2003 papers so it is not as big a drop-off as it looked like at first In 2002 it was 1677 papers and in 2003 it was down [edit: not clear how much the drop will be] from 1986 to 2002 there was a fairly steady rise in string research output (in the peer-reviewed publications that Spires tracks) and this sudden drop is without precedent. Something like this must have an explanation. What do you suppose the decline in string research could mean? What basic physics issues could it be related to? If you want to check the numbers yourself look down a couple of posts, where there are links connecting you to the Spires HEP database and using keywords to find string brane M-theory papers----the Spires keywords are "string model" "membrane model" and "matrix model". Spires is based at Stanford SLAC and Fermilab and several other national research institutions. It is an excellent database and worth knowing how to use---for following other research as well as string.

Numbers of citations are a really different kind of data from raw numbers of papers published. A guy can publish 10 papers a year and if nobody references his papers then his citation numbers are zero. Citations counts how many other research papers referenced the given one. So it is one of the few objective measures of research quality. If someone's paper has new ideas or gets useful results or is influential on the research that comes afterwards---is germinal in some sense---then it gets cited. It is like counting number of offspring in a biology experiment. When a field of research goes stale there can be people who keep on writing papers in it because that is their carreer and what they do, but the papers are basically deadwood---they bear no future research. So it is good to watch both the raw output and the gauges of quality. since it is two different things, I've put the raw output numbers in another thread and intend to focus on citations in this thread. ---------------

Links to the ArXiv search engine (expanded list) These are online papers whose abstract summary has the keywords string OR brane OR braneworld OR D-brane OR M-theory OR p-brane.) Year 1991: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/1991/0/1 Year 1992: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/1992/0/1 Year 1993: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/1993/0/1 Year 1994: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/1994/0/1 Year 1995: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/1995/0/1 Year 1996: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/1996/0/1 Year 1997: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/1997/0/1 Year 1998: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/1998/0/1 Year 1999: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/1999/0/1 Year 2000: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/2000/0/1 Year 2001: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/2001/0/1 Year 2002: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/2002/0/1 Year 2003: http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/2003/0/1 Last twelve months (e.g. 1 June 2003 to 1 June 2004): http://arXiv.org/find/nucl-ex,astro-ph,nucl-th,math-ph,hep-ex,physics,cond-mat,hep-lat,quant-ph,gr-qc,hep-ph,hep-th/1/OR+OR+abs:+OR+string+brane+abs:+OR+braneworld+D-brane+abs:+OR+M-theory+p-brane/0/1/0/past/0/1

Here are the Spires links again, to which I'll add Michael Peskin's review of the High Energy Physics research picture: the general index: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/ most-cited papers in 2003 for the overall Spires HEP database: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2003/annual.shtml Here's where Spires breaks the 2003 citations down by field astro-ph for astrophysics gr-qc for general relativity and quantum cosmology hep-th for high energy physics---theory http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2003/eprints/index.shtml Michael Peskin's review for 2003 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2003/review.shtml He is a HEP librarian at SLAC/Stanford and he does the review every year. In past years, like 2000 and 2001, he would put stringy research first, right after particle data. Now he discusses cosmology first, and then several other areas of research, and then at the end discusses string---evidently because the field has declined. why has it declined? can anyone shed some light on this.

well we lost yesterday's posts and Aeschylus had some perceptive things to say which are gone and that's too bad ----------------------- Spires HEP database (at the Stanford/SLAC Library and participating institutions)----the librarians decide what research papers are part of High Energy Physics and put them in the database Each year Spires puts out a "top 40" or "top 100" list of the most highly cited papers in HEP as a whole and also it puts out lists of highly cited papers in each of the ArXiv categories: hep-th, astro-ph, gr-qc (for general relativity-quantum cosmology) and so on. there is a slight distinction to be made in that hep-th is a voluntary category chosen by the author(s) of the paper when they submit it to ArXiv. they chose the designation. but the overall HEP data base of all research that the librarians think is High Energy Physics is not subject to the author's choice. The overall grouping is constructed by the librarians. The 1999 overall Spires HEP topcite list, with only recent papers counted, had 24 papers which received 125+ citations. Of these, 15 were recent string papers. (over 60 percent, a substantial percentage) The number of citations these 15 recent string papers received that year were: 625, 464, 425, 285, 215, 202, 170 170, 167, 148, 146, 139, 137, 130, 126 In 2003, the overall Spires HEP topcites list, with only recent articles were included, had 20 papers which garnered 125+ citations. Roughly the same number, though a higher portion were from astrophysics. But in sharp contrast only 4 of the 20 were stringy type research (a smaller percentage than in 1999, 25 percent instead of 60 percent) the numbers of citations for these 4 string papers were: 197, 135, 134, 125 --------------------------- So as a fraction of highly cited recent HEP papers, string goes down from 60 percent to 25 percent. The number of highly cited recent string papers goes from 15 to 4 And the numbers of citations, for the 15 papers in 1999 and the 4 papers in 2003 are 625, 464, 425, 285, 215, 202, 170 170, 167, 148, 146, 139, 137, 130, 126 and, for 2003: 197, 135, 134, 125 ------------------------------ Almost all research appears first in ArXiv so for the present purposes the appearance date is just given by the ArXiv number. For definiteness 'recent' means the preprint appeared in the past 4 years so at end 2000 recent papers are those which appeared in years 1997-2000. At yearend 1999 the recent papers are those appearing in the four years 1996 through 1999. Likewise as of yearend 2003, those that appeared in 2000 through 2003. ------------------------------- If we just consider the hep-th category in ArXiv, we get the same general picture. this time let's do the comparison between 2000 and 2003. According to Spires, in year 2000 there were 9 stringy research papers in hep-th that garnered 125+ citations. Here are the numbers of citations each received: 498, 446, 397, 347, 316, 268, 191, 164, 131. In 2003, by contrast, there were four recent highly cited stringy papers in hep-th, and they got: 197, 135, 134, 125 citations. ---------------- In 2003 it was, as you might guess, the same 4 papers. Topcited string papers in the hep-th category coincide with topcited string papers in the overall Spires HEP database. ---------------- It has been a sudden and dramatic decline, in the raw numbers of string research (as you can see by checking the ArXiv search engine) and the citability quality, whatever that signifies (productivity in subsequent research terms, importance). And as a percentage of the overall Spires HEP picture. The shrinking importance of stringy research in the overall High Energy Physics scene was reflected in the annual HEP review by Michael Peskin. I should get a link for that.

What figures did I give that you want to say are too low? Aeschylus, when you click on the links I gave you dont get a page that I prepared----you get a live search engine at arXiv which does a keyword search (string, brane, braneworld, M-theory, etc) for you at that moment. arXiv has been called the most valuable info resource that the physics research community has, and rightly IMO----it is a great database my guess would be in fact that the numbers you get are actually not too low but too high! the keyword search picks up papers that say "string" in other contexts like string of symbols and cosmic string you can glance over the list that the engine produces, when you click, and you will easily find a few papers that are not actually stringy physics-related. but what I am curious to know is what numbers I have posted here you think are too low

hi Aeschylus, Im looking for the best numbers which ones do you think are too low? have you tried the arxiv search engine links? please give me a sample of what you mean

Here are some Spires links: the general index: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/ most-cited papers in 2003 for the whole database: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2003/annual.shtml Here's where Spires breaks the 2003 citations down by field astro-ph for astrophysics gr-qc for general relativity and quantum cosmology hep-th for high energy physics---theory http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2003/eprints/index.shtml ----