@DrTonyPadilla @DD_Baumann @REasther So we were working on cosmological correlations, basing it on his seminal paper, where he wrote down a general theorem to calculate in-in correlations using the Baker Campbell Hausdorff formula (Eqn 2 of a 40 page paper!). But we kept getting inconsistent results…
@DrTonyPadilla @DD_Baumann @REasther Obviously since it is a Weinberg theorem it must be correct so we thought we were wrong. And so we spent months trying to find out own mistake. But it turns out that there was actually a subtle problem with using the BCH formula for in-in due to vacuum choices…
@DrTonyPadilla @DD_Baumann @REasther (Peter Adshead got the insight for this one.) But how is it possible that Weinberg got something like this wrong so we spent more time trying to convince ourselves that we didn’t screw up so we ended up proving it rigorously using the techniques from his QFT book…
@DrTonyPadilla @DD_Baumann @REasther Eventually, with trepidation we sent him an email expecting a confrontation. He wrote back immediately and said oh let me think about this for a few days. He wrote back the next day and said oh yes you guys were right and here are the reasons (which we didn’t think about)…
@DrTonyPadilla @DD_Baumann @REasther He then invited me to Austin and was incredibly generous and gracious, made time to talk to me and was full of stories. I was a young postdoc at that time but he made me feel like I had already made it in physics!
@DrTonyPadilla @DD_Baumann @REasther And our paper made it to his super short citation list for his follow ups 😀
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