Theoretical High Energy Physics in Latin America from 1990 to 2012: a Statistical Study

TL;DR

This study provides a comprehensive statistical analysis of Latin American contributions to theoretical high energy physics from 1990 to 2012, comparing them with select countries and examining socio-economic influences.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed quantitative assessment of Latin America's theoretical HEP research output and its relation to socio-economic factors over two decades.

Findings

Latin America shows progress but lags behind wealthier countries.

Research productivity correlates weakly with socio-economic indices.

Theoretical HEP in LA is unaffected by large international collaborations.

Abstract

We present a statistical overview of the publications in theoretical high energy physics (HEP), which emerged in Latin America (LA) in the period from 1990 to 2012. Our study captures the eight Latin American nations, which are dominant in this field of research: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Uruguay and Cuba. As an intercontinental benchmark, we compare them with India, Canada, South Korea, Belgium and South Africa. We consider the productivity of research papers in specialized high-impact journals, and the corresponding numbers of citations. The goal is to document the efforts in LA to catch up with the most wealthy countries, in a field of research without direct practical benefits. The restriction to theoretical HEP excludes large international collaborations, which enables a fair evaluation of national achievements. We further investigate how these records are correlated with three socio-economic indices: the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Education Index (EI). Despite some progress, there remains a backlog of LA compared to the dominant countries, which cannot be explained solely by economic deficiency. In general, a detailed correlation between the socio-economic and scientific evolution is not obvious.