Conceptual Developments of 20th Century Field Theories

Book Description

This volume provides a broad synthesis of conceptual developments of twentieth century field theories, from the general theory of relativity to quantum field theory and gauge theory. The book traces the foundations and evolution of these theories within a historio-critical context. Theoretical physicists and students of theoretical physics will find this a valuable account of the foundational problems of their discipline that will help them understand the internal logic and dynamics of theoretical physics. It will also provide professional historians and philosophers of science, particularly philosophers of physics, with a conceptual basis for further historical, cultural and sociological analysis of the theories discussed. Finally, the scientifically qualified general reader will find in this book a deeper analysis of contemporary conceptions of the physical world than can be found in popular accounts of the subject.

Customer Reviews:

Just over my head.......2007-01-09

On the basis of the publisher's review and those of other readers, I had hoped that I'd be able to follow the path of conceptual developments. True, as advertised, the mathematical rigor was not excessive. Nonetheless, maybe because the author divided the topic into a series of detailed "cuts" at multiple levels, I found myself unable to keep track. If someone replied that the problem was me, not the book, I wouldn't argue.

Thoughtful.......2002-10-25

Excellent (and virtually mathless, save for a few excurses) in-depth analysis of the way our physical thinking evolved. It covers thoroughly all conceptual signposts of the 20th century physics (stemming from distant past)- aether, space, time, space-time, field, gravitation, inertia, quantum concepts like quantization, anomalies and renormalizability. A gift of a bird's (better, eagle's) view for an undergraduate student (that's what you don't understand because you're busy solving the equations); a penetrating analysis for a patient layman (who can grasp circa 70% of the book). Highly recommended.

A rewarding challenge for the serious layman like myself.......2001-08-25

Following is a quote from the Preface: "The book is written primarily for students of theoretical physics who are interested in the foundational problems of their discipline and are struggling to grasp the internal logic and dynamics of their subject from a historical perspective. But I have also done my best to make the text accessible to general readers with a basic scientific education who feel that their cultural curiosity concerning the contemporary conception of nature cannot be satisfied by popular writings." I qualify as the "general reader" in the audience he addresses above who, "'cannot be satisfied by popular writings."

If you've been following my collection of physics books which I post at my 'Shared Purchases' and 'Listmania Lists' portion ..., then you can see that I tend to ambitiously bite off more than I can chew in my choice of intellectual reading. As I admitted in my profile, I am a guy with not much more than half a brain and a driving passion to know what the hell is really going on in this Universe. I have been eagerly searching for a book that will challenge me to grow beyond my comfort level of popular yet slightly technical introductory treatments of physics (specifically Quantum Electrodynamics). Well, I FINALLY FOUND IT! This is a special discovery! As I hope you can tell, I am very excited about my latest exposure to Tian Yu Cao's "Conceptual Developments of 20th Century Field Theories". Cao's wonderful book serves as a didactic bridge across the gapping void we serious laymen come up against when we've finished pussy-footing around with popular-introductory Quantum Physics books and are driven to explore further than our formal education (or lack thereof) will allow when delving deeper into the daunting world of QM. I'm trying to come up to a level where I can get some appreciation and comprehension of the principles in Quantum Field Theories. For example, I ambitiously procured my own copies of "Inward Bound" by Pais, "The Odd Quantum" by Treiman, Schweber's "QED and the Men Who Made it - Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga", and Mehera's, "The Beat of a Different Drummer - the life and science of Richard Feynman". I look at these books and think, "QM looks so beautiful! I want to get a comprehensive grip on this stuff'" Hopeless without University level courses in technical mathematics and physics right? I'm not convinced, I suppose I'll find out sooner or later. As it is, I just keep at it. Day after day, I immerse myself in QM literature with a passion driven by my obsessive curiosity of Nature and what we know of her physical reality. Light, Atoms, Electromagnetic Waves, Matter, Particles, and Fields; these are the things I feel compelled to investigate'

Cao's book is another stepping stone in my self-directed journey of intellectual adventure. The pedagogy of the book is at a relatively safe and sane level for the explorer who is moderately courageous and not afraid to be uncertain about his/her competency in the learning curve. As I said, Cao's book bridges the terrible gap between the easy stuff (i.e. non-technical/popular/introductory/historical level) across the abyss towards the tougher stuff (i.e. technical/rigorously mathematical University level Introduction QFT textbooks). This is a very technical book for someone at my level but I believe that if you are somewhat like me (scary thought!) you can benefit from the book's pages when armed with a serious sense curiosity and a sincere desire to grasp deep & fundamental principles of Quantum Field Theory.

There are some scary looking mathematical formulas but if you're courageous you can breeze over them and let the copious qualitative text speak to your understanding. The only subjects in this book that I don't find of particularly immediate interest to me are his sections on General Relativity as I'm not a Gravity (field) enthusiast yet. I've skimmed over those sections and suspect that I'll be back later to visit it with more interest in the future.

Be sure to carefully read the what the other reviewers have to say about their opinions of this book, look at the book description and 'Table of Contents' link above. I suggest looking at some of the following books as a prerequisite to this book if you are anywhere near my level of intellect: "Strange Beauty" by Johnson, "The Force of Symmetry" by Icke, "The Quantum World" by Polkingthorne, "The Second Creation" by Crease & Mann, "The Quantum Universe" by Hey & Walters, "Why Things Are the Way They Are" by Chandrasekhar, "QED (The Strange Theory of Light and Matter)" by Feynman, "The Great Design (Particles, Fields, and Creation)" by Adair, "Paul Dirac (The Man and His Work)" by Pais, Jacob, Olive & Atiyah, "What Makes Nature Tick?" and also "Thinking About Physics" both by Roger Newton

I hope you will forgive my enthusiasm in this review if I seem overly zealous. I'm just a curious cat. ...

Time to leave high school physics behind.......2000-11-26

Even discounting the complexity of the mathematics involved, the motivated reader who has read a number of the listed physics references here, may find the transition to modern quantum field theory conceptually difficult. This reference, will greatly aid in the transition. Explanation of how physical actions such as gravity and electromagnetism are transmitted at a distance has provoked intense debates over the centuries. The electromagnetic field and continuous ether of Thomson and Maxwell, provided a cause for actions at a distance. In Einstein's special theory of relativity the ether was removed. In Einstein's general theory of relativity, spacetime is shown to depend on the gravitational fields. Gravitational fields are considered to be a geometrical programme of field theory, and are discussed in the first part of this reference. The middle part of this reference then considers the quantum field programme. The last part of this reference then considers the gauge field programme whereby gauge potentials can explain fundamental interactions. The motivated reader will also find this reference useful for introduction to many concepts omitted in most introductory physics texts. For example, in describing how Maxwell derived his wave equations, the ability to reformulate Newtonian mechanics in terms of a Lagrangian approach is noted.

Cao's volume on 20th Century Quantum Field Theories.......2000-03-29

If you are not an expert in quantum field theory, or if you are such an expert, you should read this book from cover to cover about a dozen times at least. Cao of Boston University does for quantum theory what investigative reporters do for political or social/behavioral problems. As a renowned philosopher and quantum physicist, he gives the whole picture and nothing but the whole picture. It is even doubtful if many theoretical physicists know the whole story as it is elaborated by Cao. M. Jammer's 1974 volume gave the story of quantum mechanics and its philosophical basis from the beginning until 1974, and Cao continues this from 1974 until 1997. The astonishing changes in quantum theory from the mechanistic to the geometric to the field theory to the gauge field theory to the effective gauge field theory, as largely inspired by and created by Steven Weinberg (the Nobel Laureate), pass before you in these pages, together with the arguments with other physicists and the experimental and theoretical problems, anomalies, and philosophical difficulties. Einstein's field theory is shown to now be incorporated into quantum field theory, and we see Weinberg's final disgust with the problems that plague quantum field theory (even though he invented effective gauge quantum field theory, the latest theory) and his abandonment of field theory for string theory. Weinberg may have overstepped his intuition here, since string theory has difficult philosophical foundations as Cao points out, and in my opinion string theory is at most an approximation to reality. But Weinberg was probably correct in being fed up with quantum field theory and seeking some other direction, as he usually has been correct about everything else. The prolific roles of P. Dirac and P. Jordan, often overlooked, are well documented by Cao (Dirac seems to be at the Weinberg level of creativity and intuition, although he has gone in so many different directions that he even arouses the ire of Cao). The collapse of complementarity is thoroughly documented as well by Cao.

Membranes and Other Extendons: (P-Branes) (World Scientific Lecture Notes in Physics)

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Membranes and Other Extendons: (P-Branes) (World Scientific Lecture Notes in Physics)
Yuval Neeman , Elena Elzenberg , Yuval Ne'Eman , and Elena Eizenberg
Manufacturer: World Scientific Pub Co Inc
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Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

The interest in membranes and higher dimensional extended geometrical objects was inspired by the great successes of the string and superstring, first in 1968-73 as a theory of hadrons and then since 1984 as a "theory of everything" - a unified theory of all interactions, including quantum gravity. In particular, membranes, "supermembranes" and "spinning membranes" have been studied since 1985; an unexpected connection with supergravity opened in 1988 some new prospects for a quantized theory. General theorems about higher dimensional "p-branes" or "extendons" were also derived. The subject is very promising, whether as a more comprehensive fundamental unification or as a description of composite hadrons.

Book Description

Hans A. Bethe received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1967 for his work on the production of energy in stars. A living legend among the physics community, he helped to shape classical physics into quantum physics and increased the understanding of the atomic processes responsible for the properties of matter and of the forces governing the structures of atomic nuclei. This collection of papers by Professor Bethe dates from 1928, when he received his PhD, to now. It covers several areas and reflects the many contributions in research and discovery made by one of the most important and eminent physicists of all time. Special commentaries have been written by Professor Bethe to complement the selected papers.

Customer Reviews:

70+ years of major research papers.......2005-03-01

This is a collection of key research papers, spanning an incredible 70 plus years of prodigious output by one of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century. Amazingly, as I write this in 2005, he is still alive, at the age of 99.

The papers are really written for a physicist. All research level, and may not be that meaningful to others outside the field. Ah, but to a physicist, it is remarkable that you can read a paper on quantum mechanics, written in the 1930s, when the subject was so dazzlingly new, and know that the author is still around, and quite lucid. Many papers cite research by other great figures, now long gone. But they were all his contemporaries.

Kudos to the publisher for collecting these papers into one book.

The Qcd Vacuum, Hadrons and Superdense Matter (World Scientific Lecture Notes in Physics)

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The Qcd Vacuum, Hadrons and Superdense Matter (World Scientific Lecture Notes in Physics)
E. V. Shuryak
Manufacturer: World Scientific Publishing Company
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 9812385746

Book Description

This invaluable book is an extensive set of lecture notes on various aspects of non-perturbative quantum chromodynamics — the fundamental theory of strong interaction on which nuclear and hadronic physics is based.

The original edition of the book, written in the mid-1980's, had more of a review style. In the second edition the outline remains the same, but the text has been completely rewritten, and extended. Apart from the new developments over the years, this edition has benefited from several graduate courses which the author has taught at Stony Brook during the last decade. The text is now complemented by exercises and has a total of about 1000 references to major works, arranged by subject.

Three major issues — the structure of the QCD vacuum, the structure of hadrons, and the physics of hot/dense matter — are addressed as physics problems. Therefore, when discussing any specific subject, the book attempts to incorporate (1) all the solid theoretical results, (2) experimental information, and (3) results of numerical (lattice) simulations, which are playing an increasing role in quantum field theory in general, and the development of QCD in particular.

Customer Reviews:

Great.......2000-04-18

It is strongly recommended to read this book for a fundemental understanding of neutrino problems

The Great Design: Particles, Fields, and Creation

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The Great Overview of Physics
A Well Designed Book!
The best popular overview of physics yet.
Understandable Overall Introduction

The Great Design: Particles, Fields, and Creation
Robert K. Adair
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195060695

Book Description

Although modern physics surrounds us, and newspapers constantly refer to its concepts, most nonscientists find the subject extremely intimidating. Complicated mathematics or gross oversimplifications written by laypersons obscure most attempts to explain physics to general readers. Now, at long last, we have a comprehensive--and comprehensible--account of particles, fields, and cosmology, written by a working physicist who does not burden the reader with the weight of ponderous scientific notation. Exploring how physicists think about problems, Robert K. Adair considers the assumptions they make in order to simplify impossibly complex relationships between objects, how they determine on what scale to treat the problem, how they make measurements, and the interplay between theory and experiment. Adair gently guides the reader through the ideas of particles, fields, relativity, and quantum mechanics. He explains the great discoveries of this century--which have caused a revolution in how we view the universe--in simple, logical terms, comprehensible with a knowledge of high school algebra. Performing the difficult task of predigesting complex concepts, Adair gives nonscientists access to what often appears to be an arcane discipline, and captures the joy of discovery which lies at the heart of research.

Customer Reviews:

The Great Overview of Physics.......2007-07-07

The Great Design: Particles, Fields, and Creation by Robert Kemp Adair is a great book of physics that explains concepts that are important such as Faraday's fields to nonphysicists and people who want to learn more. This book explained a lot and cleared up a fog of questions about physics. It describes, in short, the many concepts physicists use to try to find the universal unified field and the universal theory and equation. Major components of phsics like quantum mechanics and theories like the general and special theories of relativity are explained clearly and effectively.

What I liked most about the book is the information Adair chooses to write and the way it is put together with enhancements. This way, it adds to the experience because it helped the reader clearly understand the point Adair tries to make in each chapter. This book was great in the sense that it is easy to understand once you grasp a little meaning of the concept. But I personally felt that the chapters were too long so that it was kind of repetitive, and that this book would be better if Adair spent more space telling of other subjects in physics than emphasizing minute details on individual ones.

The Great Design was an overall good read and specially designed for people who thirst for the truth. All in all, I give it a good rating and I suggest people to read this book.

A Well Designed Book!.......2001-08-31

This book makes for a great introduction of particles & fields for the layman who is inclined to take on a book which surpasses the completely qualitative & popular (non-technical/historical) books that one can easily find at your local bookstore. I should clarify that this book might be seen as somewhat more than an easy introduction by the kind of reader who enjoys reading, for example, Paul Davies, John Gribbon, Steven Hawking, and Michio Kaku's popular expositions on science (physics & cosmology). From a popular science reader's perspective it could said that this book has a technical element to it in that the mathematics are present however I believe they are at an approachable level (i.e. there are no daunting calculus derivatives, integrals or other scary looking formulas). Here, let's have the author speak for himself from the preface:

"In this book I have tried to present those basic concepts of particles and fields and of space and time, as illustrated by modern physics, very much as a professional physicist understands them. I believe that these concepts are accessible to the nonprofessional - that which I can't explain to an interested layman, I must not understand properly myself. Which is not to say the ideas are so trivial that they can be understood by physicists or layman with the "attentive mind"...
The text is nonmathematical, though on occasion simple relations are expressed in algebraic forms that should be known to anyone with a high-school education. Some more complex relations that seem to be especially interesting are presented in the extensive set of footnotes. Though few of these require mathematical sophistication beyond that taught in the first few weeks of a high-school algebra course, mathematical simplicity does not translate into conceptual simplicity, and these presentations often require careful and time-consuming thought. Once written, a book has a life of it's own independent of the author's control; however I suggest that the mathematical footnotes be samples rather than consumed. There are those who can "read" mathematics like a novel, but for most of us so compact an information transfer cannot be assimilated easily and the time required to penetrate the arguments interrupts the narrative flow excessively."

Some of the nice features of "The Great Design" include plenty of intuitive examples, illustrated figures (with some decent Feynman Diagrams), important graphs and tables. I always enjoy when an author includes famous quotes at the chapter headings as Dr. Adair does. I think that you can see into the author's mind just a little more. As promised in the authors preface I quoted above, there are a generous amount of end of chapter notes referenced throughout the main text by number. Many of these offer slightly more rigorous (and technical) mathematical elucidation of the subject or just a deeper peek at the heart of the matter. So, if you are a layman like myself, I would warn you that this book might pose a challenge but a rewarding challenge nonetheless. Based on my experience with other books I have to say that a glossary would have been nice in this book but I did without.
Finally, I thought you might like a peek at the Table of Contents:

Preface.
Contents:
1. Concepts in Physics.
2. Invariance and Conservation Laws.
3. Covariance, Scalars, Vectors, and Tensors.
4. The Discrete in Nature - The Atoms of Demokritos.
5. The Continuum in Nature - Faraday's Fields.
6. The Nature of Space and Time - The Special Theory of Relativity.
7. The Equivalence Principle and the Theory General Theory of Relativity.
8. The Electromagnetic Field - The First Unified Field Theory.
9. The Problem of Change - The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
10. Quantum Mechanics - Determinism to Probability.
11. The Atom - A Quantum Laboratory.
12. Fundamental Particles and Forces - An Introduction.
13. Symmetries and Conservation Laws - CPT.
14. The Strong Interactions.
15. The Weak Interactions.
16. Cosmology - The World's Beginning and End.
17. Gauge Invariance - The Unification of Fields.
18. To the Ultimate Theory - Through a Glass Darkly.
Index.

I've really enjoyed this humble book and benefited from its comprehensive & comprehensible exposition of particle & field physics. It served my wants & needs very well. My hat is off to the author expanding my appreciation and understanding of the subject. A fantastically well-written book which is similar yet smaller (wonderfully succinct & concise) and has less mathematics is "In Search of the Ultimate Building Blocks" by Gerard 't Hooft. If you want a more popular book (no mathematics) you might want to look at "The God Particle" by Lederman & Teresi. As a final suggestion, I am compelled to insist that "The Force of Symmetry" by Vincent Icke would complement "The Great Design" very well! I've written a review of "The Force of Symmetry" as well.

Pick up a copy of "The Great Design" quickly before it goes out of print and enjoy your pursuit of knowledge (it's a wonderful adventure)!
Ciao!
IndiAndy
p.s. remember to read the other reviews as well as the book description & editorial reviews above my review.

The best popular overview of physics yet........2000-06-13

This is the finest overview of physics for the layman or beginning physics student I have seen yet. This is not the usual history or biography based introduction but a good low-level mathematical expository on just about every current physics concept.

Understandable Overall Introduction.......1997-06-25

Perhaps the most lucid introduction to the quantum and touches of cosmology I have yet read. You can take it to many levels and go with the author and his sometimes clever, understated manner. Provides the MOST UNDERSTANDABLE explanation of the twin paradox of any of the (32) books I've read.

30 Years of the Landau Institute: Selected Papers (World Scientific Series in 20th Century Physics, Vol 11)

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30 Years of the Landau Institute: Selected Papers (World Scientific Series in 20th Century Physics, Vol 11)

Manufacturer: World Scientific Pub Co Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 981022253X

Book Description

The Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics was created in 1965 by a group of LD Landau's pupils. Very soon, it was widely recognized as one of the world's leading centers in theoretical physics. According to Science Magazine, the Institute in the eighties had the highest citation index among all the scientific organizations in the former Soviet Union. This collection of the best papers of the Institute reflects the development of the many directions in the exact sciences during the last 30 years. The reader can find the original formulations of well-known notions in condensed matter theory, quantum field theory, mathematical physics and astrophysics, which were introduced by members of the Landau Institute.

Book Description

No one has ever seen a quark. Yet physicists seem to know quite a lot about the properties and behavior of these ubiquitous elementary particles. Here a top researcher introduces us to a fascinating but invisible realm that is part of our everyday life. Timothy Smith tells us what we know about quarks--and how we know it.

Though the quarks that make science headlines are typically laboratory creations generated under extreme conditions, most quarks occur naturally. They reside in the protons and neutrons that make up almost all of the universe's known matter, from human DNA to distant nebulae, from books and tables to neutron stars. Smith explains what these quarks are, how they act, and why physicists believe in them sight unseen. How do quarks arrange themselves? What other combinations can nature make? How do quarks hold nuclei together? What else is happening in their hidden worlds? It turns out that these questions can be answered using a few simple principles, such as the old standby: opposites attract. With these few principles, Smith shows how quarks dance around each other and explains what physicists mean when they refer to "up" and "down" quarks and talk about a quark's color, flavor, and spin.

Smith also explains how we know what we know about these oddly aloof particles, which are eternally confined inside larger particles. He explains how quark experiments are mounted and how massive accelerators, targets, and detectors work together to collect the data that scientists use to infer what quarks are up to.

A nonmathematical tour of the quark world, this book is written for students, educators, and all who enjoy scientific exploration--whether they seek a taste of subnuclear physics or just wonder about nature on the smallest of scales.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent introduction to the quark hypothesis.......2003-10-31

This book provides an overview of what basic quark theory is and how it came to be from both a historical and a logical point of view. Although it's a short book, a lot of ground is covered. There is a fair amount of theory and there are dips into the particulars of high energy physics experimental apparatus. The chosen topics are interesting in themselves and they lead step by step to the endpoint of the book.

While there are a number of technical physics terms (e.g. spin, cross section), I was pleasantly surprised that the book presented very useful analogies describing what the terms represent. Whereas, in many books the spin of a particle is often visualized as the spin of a planet or a top and left at that, here spin is likened to the spin of a billiard ball as it collides with a cushion AND thus affects the angle at which the ball (or particle) rebounds. It's still hard to visualize how these tiny particles can "spin", but that's not really what's important. What is important is the measurable collision effects which can then be represented as if the particles had a spin. Once you know the effect, then you can visualize some familiar thing to help you picture the effect.

I have a physics background, so for me the book provided a overarching framework that tied together many concepts that I knew fairly well in isolation. It also provided me with some very appealing visual models, that somehow I never had seen before.

Would the book be of sufficient interest to those without a physics background? I would like to think so, but you have to keep in mind the scope of the book. The quark hypothesis, especially when theory and experiment are taken into account, is a massive topic. Just the history of the development of quark theory has spawned books of 300 or more pages. After reading this book, will you become an expert in spin statistics? Or modern day experimental apparatus? Or quarks and gluons? No. But that's not the aim of the book. It simply provides a nice overview, presented in a logical fashion with each part leading to the next, that will give you some inkling of what this stuff is all about and how it all fits together. There are some tougher parts where unusual concepts are briefly discussed, but the level of detail is only that which is necessary to further the discussion. As such, some topics may very well remain somewhat mysterious. But don't let that discourage you. If after reading you only have a vague picture of, say, "spin", then that's OK. At least you will know a bit of how why it's important. And if the tougher parts spur you to dig deeper into those topics, so much the better. Either way, the book has done its job.

While there is a nice glossary of terms, it is most unfortunate that there are no suggestions leading the way to deeper reading. In my opinion, the lack of a bibliography mars what would have otherwise been a 5 star book.

Assumes you already know quark terminology.......2003-09-27

This isn't an introductory book on quarks. It assumes you already know the terminology. What is spin? What is isospin? The glossary at the back isn't helpful. I read 20 or so pages and then realized it wasn't an oversight... He really has no plans to introduce these and other basic terms and explain them. Very disappointing.

Atoms In Electromagnetic Fields (World Scientific Series on Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics)

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Atoms In Electromagnetic Fields (World Scientific Series on Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics)
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
Manufacturer: World Scientific Publishing Company
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Binding: Paperback

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Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences

ASIN: 981256019X

Book Description

This invaluable book presents papers written during the last 40 years by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and his collaborators on various physical effects which can be observed on atoms interacting with electromagnetic fields. It consists of a personal selection of review papers, lectures given at schools, as well as original experimental and theoretical papers. Emphasis is placed on physical mechanisms and on general approaches (such as the dressed atom approach) having a wide range of applications. Various topics are discussed, such as atoms in intense laser fields, photon correlations, quantum jumps, radiative corrections, laser cooling and trapping, Bose-Einstein condensation. In this new edition, about 200-page of new material has been added.

Dynamics of Particles and the Electromagnetic Field (World Scientific Series in Contemporary Chemical Physics)

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Dynamics of Particles and the Electromagnetic Field (World Scientific Series in Contemporary Chemical Physics)
Slobodan Danko Bosanac
Manufacturer: World Scientific Publishing Company
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ASIN: 9812563962

Book Description

Advances in experimental techniques are allowing researchers to investigate the extremes of the dynamics of particle interactions with electromagnetic fields. The theoretical tools at our disposal are classical and quantum mechanics and experience has shown that it is dangerous to dismiss one at the expense of the other. Each has merits that should be fully explored; the problem, however, is to bridge the gap between them so that the information they give is complementary rather than contradictory. In this book, that goal is achieved by formulating five postulates, and the level of their implementation distinguishes the two mechanics. That the dynamics of particles (charges) is not complete without unifying it with the dynamics of electromagnetic fields is given special emphasis.

In the first of three parts in the book, Newton dynamics is formulated from the Liouville equation. In the third part, this forms the basis for implementing the uncertainty postulate to formulate quantum mechanics. The theories of relativity and electromagnetic interactions are derived from one of the five postulates in the second part, and the unification of the dynamics of particles and electromagnetic fields is formulated in the second and the third parts. Numerous examples from each section illustrate the theory.

Employing functional analysis instead of the more abstract techniques of linear spaces, linear operators, group theory, etc., the book makes well suited to advanced undergraduate level courses in classical and quantum mechanics. The material is also intended for postgraduate courses, in atomic and molecular physics in particular, with examples covering modern trends in research.

The book is accompanied by a CD-Rom featuring various illustrative examples.

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