Paper III — Physics
31 QUESTIONS
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1.
State the quantum measurement problem precisely and say what a solution would have to deliver.
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2.
Prove that the Yang–Mills mass gap, if it exists, cannot be seen perturbatively; explain the difficulty of establishing it rigorously.
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3.
What is renormalisation actually doing, physically?
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4.
Derive the equipartition theorem and state exactly where it fails.
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5.
Why does the cosmological constant problem count as a problem?
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6.
Explain gauge invariance as redundancy of description, not as symmetry of nature.
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7.
What does Bell's theorem rule out, and what does it not rule out?
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8.
Reconstruct the second law from a microscopic, reversible dynamics — where does irreversibility enter?
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9.
What is the black-hole information paradox, and what would resolve it?
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10.
Explain why the electron's spin is not literal rotation.
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11.
Give the physical meaning of the action principle.
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12.
What is spontaneously broken symmetry, and how does a Goldstone mode arise?
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13.
Why is there an arrow of time if the microphysics is time-symmetric?
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14.
Explain the significance of the Higgs mechanism for mass.
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15.
What distinguishes a phase transition from a crossover, precisely?
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16.
State Noether's theorem and apply it to a non-obvious conserved quantity.
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17.
What does decoherence explain, and what does it leave unexplained?
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18.
Why can't information travel faster than light even though entanglement is "instantaneous"?
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19.
Explain the physical content of the fluctuation–dissipation theorem.
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20.
What is a topological phase of matter, and how is it robust?
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21.
Estimate the Chandrasekhar mass from first principles.
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22.
What is the status of the fine-structure constant — computed, measured, or explained?
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23.
Why is turbulence hard, as physics rather than as mathematics?
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24.
Give the Landauer bound and explain what it says about computation.
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25.
What is the difference between a symmetry of the laws and a symmetry of a state?
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26.
Explain why general relativity resists quantisation by the usual recipe.
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27.
What does the holographic principle claim, and what evidence bears on it?
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28.
Reconcile the reversibility of the Schrödinger equation with the definiteness of measurement outcomes.
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29.
Why is temperature well-defined for a black hole?
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30.
Which single experiment, feasible or not, would most sharply discriminate between interpretations of quantum mechanics?
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31.
Is time an emergent phenomenon?
Question 31 was added by Examination Amendment v2.1. Questions 1–30 stand verbatim as fixed at expansion v2.0.