Axel Maas

A note on learning physics ⚛️ for starting PhD students:
At the risk of saying something completely useless because everyone has it worked out

There is no magic trick, your classmates *may* be faster than you, but they are still studying as long as they need to and you are quite capable of the same

Danke!

Bei dem onboarding am 12.12 werde ich auch dabei sein!

This account has really becoming a chaotic and incoherent mixture of transgenerational efforts in fundamental physics and talking about how to deal with the incoming collapse in #TalkCollapse.

Oh well, new horizons in either case.

That's us 😊 #ParticlePhysics #QuantumGravity

Thank you!

We, theoretical particle physics @uni-graz.at, is one of the successful programs! 6 fully funded PhD positions in #ParticlePhysics and #QuantumGravity. Watch this space for the advertisement!

What we will do is understand how elementary particle build composite states, both hadrons and black holes.

Teaching preparation: 7.3%
Science politics: 7.2%
Proposal writing: 5.7%

Administration: 4.7%
Examinations: 4.0%
Paper writing: 3.3%
Outreach: 2.7%
Writing my textbook: 1.6%
Catching up with the arXiv: 1.1%

Research by myself: 0.8%
Listening to talks: 0.7%
Writing talks: 0.3%

This month goes on with a lot of teaching - this year my teaching load is balanced very asymmetrically between summer and winter #ProfAtWork

Teaching in a classroom: 24.1%

Email (mostly administration): 18.2%

Working directly with PhD/Master/Bachelor student: 9.2%
Activism: 9.2%

A large construction site with multiple cranes. The constructed building is almost level with the surrounding roads almost everywhere. Its overcast.

The road indeed works, and the ground floor starts to appear. Quite impressive progress. #GCP

I will #TalkCollapse next week!

Restoring the Bloch-Nordsieck theorem in the electroweak sector of the standard model The electroweak gauge symmetry cannot be broken in a literal sense due to Elitzur's theorem. Thus, asymptotic states need to be manifestly and non-perturbatively gauge-invariant with respect to the el...

This is a topic very dear to me, as it is one of the possibilities where we may learn something fundamentally new about the standard model, and the nature of its particles. Research work from us on this can be found e.g. in arxiv.org/abs/2212.08470

We are organizing a workshop on complex electroweak final states - basically having a lot of Higgs, W, and Z particles popping out of a collision. This will be a new frontier at any future collider.

It takes place next February @uni-graz.at - registration is open at inspirehep.net/conferences/...

Thank you!

Can this also be used by others for #TalkCollapse, if not modified (and especially the source information visible)?

Besides myself, this will involve @ilonamotto.bsky.social and @dmaraun.bsky.social from @wegenercenter.bsky.social @uni-graz.at

Advertising text on the event: BETWEEN NET ZERO AND COLLAPSE, Reflection & discussion following the UN Climate Change Conference in Belém (4th of December 2025, 17:00, at University Graz, SR 62.31).

I do #TalkCollapse in Graz on December 4th: wegcenter.uni-graz.at/en/events/be...

#TalksCollapse in Graz.

Me, in the very fancy (Imperial Austria style) room where the event takes place. A big screen is visible with the event's topic. I am wearing a purple mask, sitting and looking away from the screen, quite some distance away. Many people are visible, sitting on red chairs.

And here I am.

Research by myself: 5.7%

Activism: 4.9%
Proposal writing: 4.7%
Paper writing: 4.4%
Listening to talks: 1.8%
Examinations: 1.3%

Outreach: 0.6%
Science politics: 0.3%
Catching up with the arXiv: 0.3%

This semester the new semester started, and especially with a block course on introductory math, and this shows #ProfAtWork

Teaching in a classroom: 34.6%

Email (mostly administration): 15.2%

Working directly with PhD/Master/Bachelor student: 8.6%
Administration: 8.1%
Teaching preparation: 6.0%

Very substantial progress. There are new ceilings, and it is almost at street level. I even heard that soon again trucks will drive over these ceilings, to deliver parts and materials. Gives you a bit of trust into the stability #GCP

Welcome Slaven Djukic, who will do a master thesis with @simonplaetzer.bsky.social and myself on multi-boson physics at current and future colliders - particle.uni-graz.at/en/structure...

In fact, all observed physical elementary particles become effectively extended objects, a complete change of paradigm from quasi pointlike elementary particles.

If this can be eventually confirmed at experiment, this may change fundamentally how we think about particles.

Brout-Englert-Higgs physics: From foundations to phenomenology The aim of this review is to describe the field-theoretical foundations of Brout-Englert-Higgs (BEH) physics, and to show how the usual phenomenology arises from it. This requires to give a precise an...

You can find the background about this in my review arxiv.org/abs/1712.04721 - this 45 years-old prediction is entirely redefining what we think are physical particles in electroweak physics. It may be decisive for the next big collider, and perhaps even the current one, to take this into account.

This supports the picture that physical particles are not the elementary ones, but need to be dressed by Higgs particles as bound states, without this changing their mass. This makes them extended objects. In theories different from the standard model, this can even alter the spectrum entirely.

Spectrum of the SU(2) scalar-fermion-gauge system under the influence of the Brout-Englert-Higgs effect Gauge invariance requires physical states to be composite, even in the weak sector of the Standard Model (SM). The Fröhlich-Morchio-Strocchi (FMS) mechanism resolves this subtlety and predicts additio...

Our second #EPSHEP proceeding is now available at arxiv.org/abs/2510.27457

We confirm, for the first time unquenched, what has been predicted 45 years ago by Fröhlich, Morchio, and Strocchi: A bound state of a Higgs an a light lepton (with some technical details) is much lighter than the Higgs.

Still feels surreal to discuss an transgenerational effort on a day this is released: bsky.app/profile/fish...

Me, at Vienna main train station besides the tracks. It is dark and outside.

On my way back. Intensive day, but quite happy with the ambition level of the outcome. As soon as officially finalised, I will share it. But for the moment, it will need to be approved first.

Feeling this. Just being one in a long line in history.

#TalkCollapse: What needs to factor into all our significant decisions.