Author: Indubala I. Satija
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198884850
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
The Wonder of Quantum Spin discusses the key role quantum spin continues to play in many frontiers of physics that include the study of new exotic states of matter, quantum information and quantum computing. Spin tales also include the story of MRI - one of the most important applications of quantum science to humanity.
Author: Indubala I. Satija
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198884869
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
The Wonder of Quantum Spin is a confection of the history and the science of quantum spin sprinkled with quotations and excerpts from pioneers who lived and breathed science. The book unfolds two centuries of the golden era in mathematics and physics, where first glimpses of spin appeared nearly 200 years ago in the mathematics of rotations. In these studies, spinors emerged as a new entity that changes sign after a 360 degree rotation, reminiscent of the Mobius geometry. A century later, quantum spins described by spinors was discovered in physics in atomic spectra. This led to the discovery of antimatter and raised the possibility of parity violation. It gave the first warning that protons and neutrons are not elementary. As we approach the centennial of the discovery, the spin mystique prevails as we have no clue of what exactly is spinning. Nevertheless, the theoretical framework underlying the spin determines why we exist, and explains the mysteries of the 3000-year-old phenomenon of magnetism. This book showcases MRI - one of the most important medical advances of the 20th century with a tantalizing history of the application of nuclear spin to humanity. It narrates fascinating spin tales of the precision measurements of electron and muon spin magnetic moments displaying a mindboggling confrontation between theory and experiment that remains our ambassador to quantum physics.
Author: John S. Townsend
Publisher: University Science Books
ISBN: 9781891389139
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498
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Book Description
Inspired by Richard Feynman and J.J. Sakurai, A Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics allows lecturers to expose their undergraduates to Feynman's approach to quantum mechanics while simultaneously giving them a textbook that is well-ordered, logical and pedagogically sound. This book covers all the topics that are typically presented in a standard upper-level course in quantum mechanics, but its teaching approach is new. Rather than organizing his book according to the historical development of the field and jumping into a mathematical discussion of wave mechanics, Townsend begins his book with the quantum mechanics of spin. Thus, the first five chapters of the book succeed in laying out the fundamentals of quantum mechanics with little or no wave mechanics, so the physics is not obscured by mathematics. Starting with spin systems it gives students straightfoward examples of the structure of quantum mechanics. When wave mechanics is introduced later, students should perceive it correctly as only one aspect of quantum mechanics and not the core of the subject.
Author: J. J. Sakurai
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108527426
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 570
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Book Description
Modern Quantum Mechanics is a classic graduate level textbook, covering the main quantum mechanics concepts in a clear, organized and engaging manner. The author, Jun John Sakurai, was a renowned theorist in particle theory. The second edition, revised by Jim Napolitano, introduces topics that extend the text's usefulness into the twenty-first century, such as advanced mathematical techniques associated with quantum mechanical calculations, while at the same time retaining classic developments such as neutron interferometer experiments, Feynman path integrals, correlation measurements, and Bell's inequality. A solution manual for instructors using this textbook can be downloaded from www.cambridge.org/9781108422413.
Author: Stephen Webb
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319517597
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351
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Book Description
It has been argued that science fiction (SF) gives a kind of weather forecast – not the telling of a fortune but rather the rough feeling of what the future might be like. The intention in this book is to consider some of these bygone forecasts made by SF and to use this as a prism through which to view current developments in science and technology. In each of the ten main chapters - dealing in turn with antigravity, space travel, aliens, time travel, the nature of reality, invisibility, robots, means of transportation, augmentation of the human body, and, last but not least, mad scientists - common assumptions once made by the SF community about how the future would turn out are compared with our modern understanding of various scientific phenomena and, in some cases, with the industrial scaling of computational and technological breakthroughs. A further intention is to explain how the predictions and expectations of SF were rooted in the scientific orthodoxy of their day, and use this to explore how our scientific understanding of various topics has developed over time, as well as to demonstrate how the ideas popularized in SF subsequently influenced working scientists. Since gaining a BSc in physics from the University of Bristol and a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Manchester, Stephen Webb has worked in a variety of universities in the UK. He is a regular contributor to the Yearbook of Astronomy series and has published an undergraduate textbook on distance determination in astronomy and cosmology as well as several popular science books.
Author: Ruth E. Kastner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108830447
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
Provides a comprehensive exposition of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics and its compatibility with relativity.
Author: Manjit Kumar
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
ISBN: 1848311036
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 447
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Book Description
'This is about gob-smacking science at the far end of reason ... Take it nice and easy and savour the experience of your mind being blown without recourse to hallucinogens' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian For most people, quantum theory is a byword for mysterious, impenetrable science. And yet for many years it was equally baffling for scientists themselves. In this magisterial book, Manjit Kumar gives a dramatic and superbly-written history of this fundamental scientific revolution, and the divisive debate at its core. Quantum theory looks at the very building blocks of our world, the particles and processes without which it could not exist. Yet for 60 years most physicists believed that quantum theory denied the very existence of reality itself. In this tour de force of science history, Manjit Kumar shows how the golden age of physics ignited the greatest intellectual debate of the twentieth century. Quantum theory is weird. In 1905, Albert Einstein suggested that light was a particle, not a wave, defying a century of experiments. Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Erwin Schrodinger's famous dead-and-alive cat are similarly strange. As Niels Bohr said, if you weren't shocked by quantum theory, you didn't really understand it. While "Quantum" sets the science in the context of the great upheavals of the modern age, Kumar's centrepiece is the conflict between Einstein and Bohr over the nature of reality and the soul of science. 'Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into believing that the problem had been solved', lamented the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann. But in "Quantum", Kumar brings Einstein back to the centre of the quantum debate. "Quantum" is the essential read for anyone fascinated by this complex and thrilling story and by the band of brilliant men at its heart.
Author: F.A. Berezin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401131546
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 573
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Book Description
This volume deals with those topics of mathematical physics, associated with the study of the Schrödinger equation, which are considered to be the most important. Chapter 1 presents the basic concepts of quantum mechanics. Chapter 2 provides an introduction to the spectral theory of the one-dimensional Schrödinger equation. Chapter 3 opens with a discussion of the spectral theory of the multi-dimensional Schrödinger equation, which is a far more complex case and requires careful consideration of aspects which are trivial in the one-dimensional case. Chapter 4 presents the scattering theory for the multi-dimensional non-relativistic Schrödinger equation, and the final chapter is devoted to quantization and Feynman path integrals. These five main chapters are followed by three supplements, which present material drawn on in the various chapters. The first two supplements deal with general questions concerning the spectral theory of operators in Hilbert space, and necessary information relating to Sobolev spaces and elliptic equations. Supplement 3, which essentially stands alone, introduces the concept of the supermanifold which leads to a more natural treatment of quantization. Although written primarily for mathematicians who wish to gain a better awareness of the physical aspects of quantum mechanics and related topics, it will also be useful for mathematical physicists who wish to become better acquainted with the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics. Much of the material included here has been based on lectures given by the authors at Moscow State University, and this volume can also be recommended as a supplementary graduate level introduction to the spectral theory of differential operators with both discrete and continuous spectra. This English edition is a revised, expanded version of the original Soviet publication.
Author: Travis Norsen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319658670
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
Authored by an acclaimed teacher of quantum physics and philosophy, this textbook pays special attention to the aspects that many courses sweep under the carpet. Traditional courses in quantum mechanics teach students how to use the quantum formalism to make calculations. But even the best students - indeed, especially the best students - emerge rather confused about what, exactly, the theory says is going on, physically, in microscopic systems. This supplementary textbook is designed to help such students understand that they are not alone in their confusions (luminaries such as Albert Einstein, Erwin Schroedinger, and John Stewart Bell having shared them), to sharpen their understanding of the most important difficulties associated with interpreting quantum theory in a realistic manner, and to introduce them to the most promising attempts to formulate the theory in a way that is physically clear and coherent. The text is accessible to students with at least one semester of prior exposure to quantum (or "modern") physics and includes over a hundred engaging end-of-chapter "Projects" that make the book suitable for either a traditional classroom or for self-study.
Author: Indubala I Satija
Publisher: Morgan & Claypool Publishers
ISBN: 1681741172
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
Butterfly in the Quantum World by Indu Satija, with contributions by Douglas Hofstadter, is the first book ever to tell the story of the "Hofstadter butterfly", a beautiful and fascinating graph lying at the heart of the quantum theory of matter. The butterfly came out of a simple-sounding question: What happens if you immerse a crystal in a magnetic field? What energies can the electrons take on? From 1930 onwards, physicists struggled to answer this question, until 1974, when graduate student Douglas Hofstadter discovered that the answer was a graph consisting of nothing but copies of itself nested down infinitely many times. This wild mathematical object caught the physics world totally by surprise, and it continues to mesmerize physicists and mathematicians today. The butterfly plot is intimately related to many other important phenomena in number theory and physics, including Apollonian gaskets, the Foucault pendulum, quasicrystals, the quantum Hall effect, and many more. Its story reflects the magic, the mystery, and the simplicity of the laws of nature, and Indu Satija, in a wonderfully personal style, relates this story, enriching it with a vast number of lively historical anecdotes, many photographs, beautiful visual images, and even poems, making her book a great feast, for the eyes, for the mind and for the soul.
