The Evolution of Lattice Field Theory: a Statistical Study

Abstract

Researchers working in lattice field theory constitute an established community since the early 1990s, and around the same time the online open-access e-print repository arXiv was created. The fact that this field has a specific arXiv section, hep-lat, provides a unique opportunity for a statistical study of its evolution over the last three decades. We present data for the number of entries, $E$, published papers, $P$, and citations, $C$, in total and separated by nations. We compare them to 6 other arXiv sections, and to socio-economic indices of the nations involved, namely the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Education Index (EI). We present rankings, which are based either on the Hirsch Index $H$, or on the linear combination $\Sigma = E + P + 0.05 C$. We consider both extensive and intensive national statistics, i.e. absolute and relative to the population or to the GDP.