Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fourier expansion electromagnetic field

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. The arguments for keep are that the material is valid and of interest, but even two of the keeps admit that it verges on NOTTEXTBOOK. I find the delete arguments compelling, well summarised by Dingo in his series of comments at the end. JohnCD (talk) 21:54, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fourier expansion electromagnetic field[edit]

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Contested PROD. This forest of maths doesn't explain how to get to photons, and is otherwise similar to a textbook discussion of the Fourier transform which can be applied to anything. It's referenced only to an article from Citizendium and may well be original research. Wikipedia is not a maths textbook. As a sanity check on my own limitations, I found zero hits on Google Scholar and Google Books for this phrase. Wtshymanski (talk) 13:15, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Non-encyclopedic content. If it's a valid encyclopedic term — which I am considering a moot question in the case of this unsalvageable mess of an article — the description should be in English, with appropriate references. Carrite (talk) 15:43, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

~~*Delete~~ The Citizendium that this is a copy of seems to be a draft (with a statement on it that it should not be cited). The draft was started about 15 months ago and then apparently abandoned. ~~The subject seems non-notable.~~ It is certainly possible to take the fourier transform of an EM field, and there may be situations when it is useful to do so. But the subject belongs within those situations. And the detailed equations just obscure things. Dingo1729 (talk) 17:18, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is a sister article to this, Quantization of the electromagnetic field, also "dumped from citizendium" as the article histories say. I think the two articles need to be reviewed together by an expert and a decision on how much of the material should be included in quantum mechanics articles and what a good organization of articles would be. I will put a request over at WP:Physics. Dingo1729 (talk) 00:59, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 18:10, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The article makes good sense. Fourier expansion is essential for the quantization of the electromagnetic field and is an important topic. The article gives more detail to Quantization of the electromagnetic field. It is all standard textbook material that appears in hundreds of books on electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:51, 24 March 2011 (UTC).[reply]
Delete there's nothing particularly notable about the Fourier expansion of EM fields. Seems like a textbook-case of WP:NOTTEXTBOOK, if you'll pardon the pun. From a quick (30 seconds glance), the maths are right and could probably all be referenced, but as Dino said, that does not warrant its own article. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:48, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Quantization of the electromagnetic field looks like garble and I wish the argument looked more like that on page 272 of [1] or one of the other hundreds of books on quantum mechanics. This could well be a hoax entire. --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:59, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No hoax. It's all textbook material and the rather elementary mathematics appear to be correct. It's the same as on the next few pages of the source you cite. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:08, 25 March 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Well, there's elementary and then there's elementary for someone studying a course in quantum mechanics. There seems to be at very least a typographic problem or two and I think this is too detailed for an article in a general encyclopedia. The general framework of the idea is simply lost in the forest of equations. In fact, I'm not really sure what the idea is. Is it that the fourier transform of a function periodic in all three dimensions is a triply indexed discrete function? Or is it that the Electric Field and the Magnetic Field can be defined from the Vector Potential? Or what? Dingo1729 (talk) 18:09, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

keep: It is a notable when combined with Quantization of the electromagnetic field. Perhaps it needs to be moved to a more notable name or merged with that article, but the material is useful and as appropriate to WP as many other esoteric subjects. I don't think that WP:NOTTEXTBOOK applies as that policy is currently written. There the main criterion seems to be whether or not it is there to 'instruct' or 'inform'. I believe that the latter is the case here. * Edit (10:21, 31 March 2011) After looking at the material with fresh eyes and after viewing the other comments, I agree that it does violate WP:NOTTEXTBOOK (see my comments below). I still don't think that the article violates it to the extent that the solution should be deletion. TStein (talk) 20:53, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or redirect to Quantum Field Theory or to Canonical quantization. I think these articles are much better developed than either Fourier expansion electromagnetic field or Quantization of the electromagnetic field. They also cover much the same material but at a better level. I'd also disagree with TStein about WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. I think that item 6 there applies quite closely to these articles. Dingo1729 (talk) 21:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Don't agree with redirect. These two articles give more nitty-gritty details than Quantum Field Theory or Canonical quantization. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:51, 25 March 2011 (UTC).[reply]

While the article violates both item 5 (reads like a textbook) and item 6 (reads too much like a technical paper), it is not so bad as to justify deletion IMO. These violations are not fundamental to the article but only in the flawed (for an encyclopedia) way that portions of it are written. The main intro needs to be rewritten and the equations better motivated with some removed as being too detailed. It needs to be better linked to other articles as well. TStein (talk) 21:31, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Eduemoni ^↑talk↓ 03:34, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep. The formulas are notable some sense and probably easy to give precise references for. It seems like a lot of it is almost too trivial, though, and so I do worry about WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. Anyone capable of reading the article is probably just as capable of coming up with these formulas on their own with a little effort. Still, I don't really see that as a compelling reason to delete it. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:55, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Not an encyclopedic topic. WP:NOTTEXTBOOK etc.T R 06:01, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Would you like to expand on why it isn't? Xxanthippe (talk) 08:27, 1 April 2011 (UTC).[reply]
This article is the technical equivalent of Melting chocolate to make brownies. Fourier expanding is a useful and notable technique in physics (which is why we have an article Fourier expansion) like melting chocolate is in cooking (we don't have a melting chocolate article but we have bain-marie). Applying this technique to an electromagnetic field is certainly useful (and even essential is some applications), but not suitable as a separate article. There is no possible content for this article other than explaining WP:HOWTO apply this technique in this particular situation. T R 12:27, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment 1 The two articles Quantization of the electromagnetic field and Fourier expansion electromagnetic field should be considered together. The latter is simply a sub-page of the former. They were both written on Citizendium by the same editor, who has academic credentials in Theoretical Chemistry. He left them as drafts when he left Citizendium after an unrelated dispute. He had left Wikipedia before that after a similar dispute. They were imported (the edit summary says dumped) to Wikipedia a year ago and have been largely unchanged since then. Unless someone is likely to work on them I don't think that we should leave uncompleted drafts in articlespace in the hope that someone will come along and complete them.

Comment 2 The Citizendium articles are marked “This is a draft article, under development and not meant to be cited”. We have both cited and copied the articles. I don't think we should be doing this. I know we can, I just don't think we should.

Comment 3 I'm not an expert in quantum mechanics, my only exposure being a single course some decades ago. But I am quite familiar with fourier transform calculations. I (arrogantly?) believe that this article should be informative and accessible for someone at my level, but it's really not. I'm not complaining about the formulas, just that they seem to give very little information. I'm in favor of articles on specialized subjects, but this just seems too far.

Comment 4 It took me quite some time to even discern what the articles are about. I think a reasonable description would be Quantum mechanical calculations related to an electromagnetic field in a cubical cavity. The “cubical cavity” part is quite important; the calculations would be quite different if the cavity were spherical or irregularly shaped. And in free space several of the summations would need to be replaced by integrals. I agree with Xxanthippe that this same calculation can be found in some textbooks, however it should be made clear that what this is is a worked example in an advanced course on quantum mechanics.

Comment 5 The obscurity of the article is shown by the fact that one experienced editor thought that it might be a hoax. I agree with Xxanthippe that it isn't, but the other editor is not unqualified in physics.

Comment 6 I apologize for making so many comments. Corrections or endorsements are welcome. Dingo1729 (talk) 04:47, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.