47 results for "Physics"

Functional integration and quantum physics

Simon, Barry
The main theme of this book is the 'path integral technique' and its applications to constructive methods of quantum physics. The central topic is probabilistic foundations of the Feynman-Kac formula. Starting with main examples of Gaussian processes (the Brownian motion, the oscillatory process, and the Brownian bridge), the author presents four different proofs of the Feynman-Kac formula. Also included is a simple exposition of stochastic Ito calculus and its applications, in particular to the Hamiltonian of a particle in a magnetic field (the Feynman-Kac-Ito formula).Among other topics discussed are the probabilistic approach to the bound of the number of ground states of correlation inequalities (the Birman-Schwinger principle, Lieb's formula, etc.), the calculation of asymptotics for functional integrals of Laplace type (the theory of Donsker-Varadhan) and applications, scattering theory, the theory of crushed ice, and the Wiener sausage. Written with great care and containing many highly illuminating examples, this classic book is highly recommended to anyone interested in applications of functional integration to quantum physics. It can also serve as a textbook for a course in functional integration.
AMS Chelsea Pub 2005 306 pages

Quantum Relativity: A Synthesis of the Ideas of Einstein and Heisenberg

David R. Finkelstein
Over the past years the author has developed a quantum language going beyond the concepts used by Bohr and Heisenberg. The simple formal algebraic language is designed to be consistent with quantum theory. It differs from natural languages in its epistemology, modal structure, logical connections, and copulatives. Starting from ideas of John von Neumann and in part also as a response to his fundamental work, the author bases his approach on what one really observes when studying quantum processes. This way the new language can be seen as a clue to a deeper understanding of the concepts of quantum physics, at the same time avoiding those paradoxes which arise when using natural languages. The work is organized didactically: The reader learns in fairly concrete form about the language and its structure as well as about its use for physics.
Springer 2011-10-05 578 pages

Time's arrows and quantum measurement

Schulman, L. S.
This book is an introduction to the arrow of time in thermodynamics and cosmology, and develops a new quantum measurement theory in which the foregoing concepts play an essential role. The first chapter is an overview and "route map" and is followed by an exposition of irreversibility, the expansion of the universe and other arrows of time. The author examines the thesis that the thermodynamic arrow follows the cosmological one, and in doing so extends traditional statistical mechanics. The second part of the book presents a new theory of quantum measurement and possible experimental tests. This theory incorporates the extended statistical mechanics in an essential way. The last chapter discusses open experimental and theoretical issues. Written in a lively and accessible style, the text is liberally sprinkled with exercises. Each chapter ends with a resources section that includes notes, further reading, and technical appendices. This book will fascinate graduate students in physics, cosmology, and the philosophy of physics.
Cambridge University Press 1997-07-31 346 pages

Third Workshop on Grand Unification University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill April 15–17, 1982

P.H. Frampton,S.L. Glashow,H. Van Dam
This workshop held at the University of North Carolina was in the series which started with meetings in the University of New Hampshire (April 1980) and the University of Michigan (April 1981). More than one hundred participants congregated in the Carolina Inn in April 1982 to discuss the status of grand unified theories and their connection to experiment. The spring foliage of Chapel Hill provided a beautiful back-drop to this Third Workshop on Grand Unification. As mentioned in the first talk herein, these three workshops have heard of indications, respectively, of neutrino oscillations, proton decay and a magnetic monopole. Since all three experimental reports remain unconfirmed, grand unifiers must wait expectantly and patiently. These proceedings preserve faithfully the ordering of the workshop talks which followed the tradition of alternation between theory and experiment. Only our introduction will segregate them. The experimental presentations mainly concerned proton decay and massive neutrinos. Four U.S. proton decay experiments were reported: the Brookhaven Irvine-Michigan experiment in the Morton Salt Mine at Fairport Harbor, Ohio was described by WILLIAM KROPP, and ROBERT MORSE represented the Harvard-Purdue-Wisconsin group in the Silver King Mine, Utah. The Homestake Mine, South Dakota and Soudan Mine, Minnesota, experiments were reported respectively by RICHARD STEINBERG and DAVID AYRES, the latter providing also a survey of future U.S. experiments.
Birkhäuser Boston 2012-11-29 378 pages

Quantum mechanics and gravity

Sachs, Mendel
Theoretical physics is presently at a very exciting time in the history of scientific discovery. For we are at a precipice facing two conflicting 20th century revolutionary movements in physics, each purporting to be basic truths of nature - the quantum theory and the theory of relativity. In the 20th century the mathematical expression of the quantum theory yielded correct predictions of a great deal of the data on the behavior of the molecular, atomic, nuelear and elementary partiele domains of matter. In the same period, the theory of relativity suc cessfully described new features of material systems. In special rela tivity, the relativistic Doppler effects (transverse and longitudinal) of electromagnetic radiation, and the mechanics of matter that moves at speeds elose to the speed of light, revealing, for example, the en 2 ergy mass relation, E = mc , revolutionized our thinking. In its form of general relativity, it has yielded a formalism that successfully pre dicted features of the phenomenon of gravity, also predicted by the elassical Newtonian theory, but in addition, features not predicted by the elassical theory, thereby superceding Newton's theory of universal gravitation. The problem we are now faced with, in these early decades of the 21st century, is that in their precise mathematical forms and their conceptual bases, the theory of relativity and the quantum theory are both logically and mathematically incompatible.
Springer 2011 192 pages

Quantum mechanics from general relativity: an approximation for a theory of inertia

Sachs, Mendel
This monograph is a sequel to my earlier work, General Relativity and Matter [1], which will be referred to henceforth as GRM. The monograph, GRM, focuses on the full set of implications of General Relativity Theory, as a fundamental theory of matter in all domains, from elementary particle physics to cosmology. It is shown there to exhibit an explicit unification of the gravitational and electromagnetic fields of force with the inertial manifestations of matter, expressing the latter explicitly in terms of a covariant field theory within the structure of this general theory. This monograph will focus, primarily, on the special relativistic limit of the part of this general field theory of matter that deals with inertia, in the domain where quantum mechanics has been evoked in contemporary physics as a funda mental explanation for the behavior of elementary matter. Many of the results presented in this book are based on earlier published works in the journals, which will be listed in the Bibliography. These results will be presented here in an expanded form, with more discussion on the motivation and explanation for the theoretical development of the subject than space would allow in normal journal articles, and they will be presented in one place where there would then be a more unified and coherent explication of the subject.
D. Reidel 1986-07-01 227 pages