Symmetry, Broken Symmetry, and Topology in Modern Physics

Symmetry, Broken Symmetry, and Topology in Modern Physics PDF Author: Mike Guidry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009008420
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 666

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Book Description
Written for use in teaching and for self-study, this book provides a comprehensive and pedagogical introduction to groups, algebras, geometry, and topology. It assimilates modern applications of these concepts, assuming only an advanced undergraduate preparation in physics. It provides a balanced view of group theory, Lie algebras, and topological concepts, while emphasizing a broad range of modern applications such as Lorentz and Poincaré invariance, coherent states, quantum phase transitions, the quantum Hall effect, topological matter, and Chern numbers, among many others. An example based approach is adopted from the outset, and the book includes worked examples and informational boxes to illustrate and expand on key concepts. 344 homework problems are included, with full solutions available to instructors, and a subset of 172 of these problems have full solutions available to students.

Symmetry, Broken Symmetry, and Topology in Modern Physics

Symmetry, Broken Symmetry, and Topology in Modern Physics PDF Author: Mike Guidry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009008420
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 666

Get Book Here

Book Description
Written for use in teaching and for self-study, this book provides a comprehensive and pedagogical introduction to groups, algebras, geometry, and topology. It assimilates modern applications of these concepts, assuming only an advanced undergraduate preparation in physics. It provides a balanced view of group theory, Lie algebras, and topological concepts, while emphasizing a broad range of modern applications such as Lorentz and Poincaré invariance, coherent states, quantum phase transitions, the quantum Hall effect, topological matter, and Chern numbers, among many others. An example based approach is adopted from the outset, and the book includes worked examples and informational boxes to illustrate and expand on key concepts. 344 homework problems are included, with full solutions available to instructors, and a subset of 172 of these problems have full solutions available to students.

Symmetry, Broken Symmetry, and Topology in Modern Physics

Symmetry, Broken Symmetry, and Topology in Modern Physics PDF Author: Mike Guidry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316518612
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
A pedagogical introduction to the modern applications of groups, algebras, and topology for undergraduate and graduate students in physics.

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe PDF Author: Sean Carroll
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593186583
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Most appealing... technical accuracy and lightness of tone... Impeccable.”—Wall Street Journal “A porthole into another world.”—Scientific American “Brings science dissemination to a new level.”—Science The most trusted explainer of the most mind-boggling concepts pulls back the veil of mystery that has too long cloaked the most valuable building blocks of modern science. Sean Carroll, with his genius for making complex notions entertaining, presents in his uniquely lucid voice the fundamental ideas informing the modern physics of reality. Physics offers deep insights into the workings of the universe but those insights come in the form of equations that often look like gobbledygook. Sean Carroll shows that they are really like meaningful poems that can help us fly over sierras to discover a miraculous multidimensional landscape alive with radiant giants, warped space-time, and bewilderingly powerful forces. High school calculus is itself a centuries-old marvel as worthy of our gaze as the Mona Lisa. And it may come as a surprise the extent to which all our most cutting-edge ideas about black holes are built on the math calculus enables. No one else could so smoothly guide readers toward grasping the very equation Einstein used to describe his theory of general relativity. In the tradition of the legendary Richard Feynman lectures presented sixty years ago, this book is an inspiring, dazzling introduction to a way of seeing that will resonate across cultural and generational boundaries for many years to come.

Aspects of Symmetry

Aspects of Symmetry PDF Author: Sidney Coleman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139810960
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
For almost two decades, Sidney Coleman has been giving review lectures on frontier topics in theoretical high-energy physics at the International School of Subnuclear Physics held each year at Erice, Sicily. This volume is a collection of some of the best of these lectures. To this day they have few rivals for clarity of exposition and depth of insight. Although very popular when first published, many of the lectures have been difficult to obtain recently. Graduate students and professionals in high-energy physics will welcome this collection by a master of the field.

Topology And Physics

Topology And Physics PDF Author: Chen Ning Yang
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9813278684
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
'The book is an engaging and influential collection of significant contributions from an assembly of world expert leaders and pioneers from different fields, working at the interface between topology and physics or applications of topology to physical systems … The book explores many interesting and novel topics that lie at the intersection between gravity, quantum fields, condensed matter, physical cosmology and topology … A rich, well-organized, and comprehensive overview of remarkable and insightful connections between physics and topology is here made available to the physics reader.'Contemporary PhysicsSince its birth in Poincaré's seminal 1894 'Analysis Situs', topology has become a cornerstone of mathematics. As with all beautiful mathematical concepts, topology inevitably — resonating with that Wignerian principle of the effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences — finds its prominent role in physics. From Chern-Simons theory to topological quantum field theory, from knot invariants to Calabi-Yau compactification in string theory, from spacetime topology in cosmology to the recent Nobel Prize winning work on topological insulators, the interactions between topology and physics have been a triumph over the past few decades.In this eponymous volume, we are honoured to have contributions from an assembly of grand masters of the field, guiding us with their world-renowned expertise on the subject of the interplay between 'Topology' and 'Physics'. Beginning with a preface by Chen Ning Yang on his recollections of the early days, we proceed to a novel view of nuclei from the perspective of complex geometry by Sir Michael Atiyah and Nick Manton, followed by an entrée toward recent developments in two-dimensional gravity and intersection theory on the moduli space of Riemann surfaces by Robbert Dijkgraaf and Edward Witten; a study of Majorana fermions and relations to the Braid group by Louis H Kauffman; a pioneering investigation on arithmetic gauge theory by Minhyong Kim; an anecdote-enriched review of singularity theorems in black-hole physics by Sir Roger Penrose; an adventure beyond anyons by Zhenghan Wang; an aperçu on topological insulators from first-principle calculations by Haijun Zhang and Shou-Cheng Zhang; finishing with synopsis on quantum information theory as one of the four revolutions in physics and the second quantum revolution by Xiao-Gang Wen. We hope that this book will serve to inspire the research community.

Quantum Field Theory

Quantum Field Theory PDF Author: Mark Srednicki
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139462768
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 664

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Book Description
Quantum field theory is the basic mathematical framework that is used to describe elementary particles. This textbook provides a complete and essential introduction to the subject. Assuming only an undergraduate knowledge of quantum mechanics and special relativity, this book is ideal for graduate students beginning the study of elementary particles. The step-by-step presentation begins with basic concepts illustrated by simple examples, and proceeds through historically important results to thorough treatments of modern topics such as the renormalization group, spinor-helicity methods for quark and gluon scattering, magnetic monopoles, instantons, supersymmetry, and the unification of forces. The book is written in a modular format, with each chapter as self-contained as possible, and with the necessary prerequisite material clearly identified. It is based on a year-long course given by the author and contains extensive problems, with password protected solutions available to lecturers at www.cambridge.org/9780521864497.

QCD and Collider Physics

QCD and Collider Physics PDF Author: R. K. Ellis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521545891
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
A detailed overview of the physics of high-energy colliders emphasising the role of QCD.

Fearful Symmetry

Fearful Symmetry PDF Author: Anthony Zee
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400874505
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
An engaging exploration of beauty in physics, with a foreword by Nobel Prize–winning physicist Roger Penrose The concept of symmetry has widespread manifestations and many diverse applications—from architecture to mathematics to science. Yet, as twentieth-century physics has revealed, symmetry has a special, central role in nature, one that is occasionally and enigmatically violated. Fearful Symmetry brings the incredible discoveries of the juxtaposition of symmetry and asymmetry in contemporary physics within everyone's grasp. A. Zee, a distinguished physicist and skillful expositor, tells the exciting story of how contemporary theoretical physicists are following Einstein in their search for the beauty and simplicity of Nature. Animated by a sense of reverence and whimsy, Fearful Symmetry describes the majestic sweep and accomplishments of twentieth-century physics—one of the greatest chapters in the intellectual history of humankind.

A Mathematical Introduction To General Relativity

A Mathematical Introduction To General Relativity PDF Author: Amol Sasane
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811243794
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
The book aims to give a mathematical presentation of the theory of general relativity (that is, spacetime-geometry-based gravitation theory) to advanced undergraduate mathematics students. Mathematicians will find spacetime physics presented in the definition-theorem-proof format familiar to them. The given precise mathematical definitions of physical notions help avoiding pitfalls, especially in the context of spacetime physics describing phenomena that are counter-intuitive to everyday experiences.In the first part, the differential geometry of smooth manifolds, which is needed to present the spacetime-based gravitation theory, is developed from scratch. Here, many of the illustrating examples are the Lorentzian manifolds which later serve as spacetime models. This has the twofold purpose of making the physics forthcoming in the second part relatable, and the mathematics learnt in the first part less dry. The book uses the modern coordinate-free language of semi-Riemannian geometry. Nevertheless, to familiarise the reader with the useful tool of coordinates for computations, and to bridge the gap with the physics literature, the link to coordinates is made through exercises, and via frequent remarks on how the two languages are related.In the second part, the focus is on physics, covering essential material of the 20th century spacetime-based view of gravity: energy-momentum tensor field of matter, field equation, spacetime examples, Newtonian approximation, geodesics, tests of the theory, black holes, and cosmological models of the universe.Prior knowledge of differential geometry or physics is not assumed. The book is intended for self-study, and the solutions to the (over 200) exercises are included.

Introduction to Many-Body Physics

Introduction to Many-Body Physics PDF Author: Piers Coleman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316432025
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 815

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Book Description
A modern, graduate-level introduction to many-body physics in condensed matter, this textbook explains the tools and concepts needed for a research-level understanding of the correlated behavior of quantum fluids. Starting with an operator-based introduction to the quantum field theory of many-body physics, this textbook presents the Feynman diagram approach, Green's functions and finite-temperature many-body physics before developing the path integral approach to interacting systems. Special chapters are devoted to the concepts of Fermi liquid theory, broken symmetry, conduction in disordered systems, superconductivity and the physics of local-moment metals. A strong emphasis on concepts and numerous exercises make this an invaluable course book for graduate students in condensed matter physics. It will also interest students in nuclear, atomic and particle physics.