The intersection of probability and physics has been a rich and explosive area of growth in the past two decades, specifically covering such subjects as percolation theory, random walks, interacting particle systems, and various topics related to statistical mechanics. In the last several years, substantial progress has been made in a number of directions: fluctuations of 2-dimensional growth processes, Wulf constructions in higher dimensions for percolation, Potts and Ising models, classification of random walks in random environments, the introduction of the stochastic Loewner equation, the rigorous proof of intersection exponents for planar Brownian motion, and finally the proof of conformal invariance for critical percolation on the triangular lattice. This volume consists of a collection of invited articles, written by some of the most distinguished probabilists in the above-mentioned areas, most of whom were personally responsible for advances in the various subfields of probability. All of the articles are an outgrowth of the Fourth Brazilian School of Probability, held in Mambucaba, Brazil, August 2000. Contributors: K. Alexander * J.M. AzaAs * J. van den Berg * T. Bodineau * F. Camia * N. Cancrini * G. Grimmett * P. Hiemer * A.E. Holroyd * H. Kesten * G.F. Lawler * T.M. Liggett * J. Lorinczi * F. Martinelli * C. M. Newman * J. Quastel * C.-E. Pfister * M. PrAhofer * C. Roberto * O. Schramm * V. Sidoravicius * H. Spohn * A. Toom * B. TA3th * D. Ueltschi * W. Werner * M. Wschebor * M. WA1/4thrich Graduate students and researchers in probability theory and math physics will find this book a useful reference.

Equivariant cohomology on smooth manifolds is the subject of this book which is part of a collection of volumes edited by J. Bruning and V.W. Guillemin. The point of departure are two relatively short but very remarkable papers be Henry Cartan, published in 1950 in the Proceedings of the "Colloque de Topologie." These papers are reproduced here, together with a modern introduction to the subject, written by two of the leading experts in the field. This "introduction" comes as a textbook of its own, though, presenting the first full treatment of equivariant cohomology in the de Rahm setting. The well known topological approach is linked with the differential form aspect through the equivariant de Rahm theorem. The systematic use of supersymmetry simplifies considerably the ensuing development of the basic technical tools which are then applied to a variety of subjects, leading up to the localization theorems and other very recent results."

Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) Volume 17 highlights major developments in this area reported up to the end of 1999, with results being set into the context of earlier work and presented as a set of critical yet coherent overviews. The topics covered describe contrasting types of application, ranging from biological areas such as EPR and ENDOR studies of metalloproteins and evidence of free-radical reactions in biology and medically-related systems, to experimental developments and applications involving EPR imaging, the use of very high fields, and time-resolved methods. Critical reviews of applications involving bacterial photosynthesis, spin-labelling and spin-probes studies of self-assembled systems, and organometallic chemistry are also included. As EPR continues to find new applications in virtually all areas of modern science, including physics, chemistry, biology and materials science, this series caters not only for experts in the field, but also those wishing to gain a general overview of EPR applications in a given area. Specialist Periodical Reports provide systematic and detailed review coverage in major areas of chemical research. Compiled by teams of leading authorities in the relevant subject areas, the series creates a unique service for the active research chemist, with regular, in-depth accounts of progress in particular fields of chemistry. Subject coverage within different volumes of a given title is similar and publication is on an annual or biennial basis.

Mankind has a fascination with measurement. Down the centuries we have produced a plethora of incompatible and duplicatory systems for measuring everything from the width of an Egyptian pyramid to the concentration of radioactivity near a nuclear reactor and the value of the fine structure constant. With the introduction first of the metric system and of its successor the Système International d'Unités (SI), the scientific community has established a standard method of measurement based on only seven core units. The Encyclopaedia of Scientific Units, Weights and Measures converts the huge variety of units from all over the world in every period of recorded history into units of the SI. Featuring: - An A - Z of conversion tables for over 10,000 units of measurements. - Tables of the fundamental constants of nature with their units. - Listings of professional societies, and national standardization bodies for easy reference. - An extensive bibliography detailing further reading on the multifarious aspects of measurement and its units. This huge work is simply a "must have" for any reference library frequented by scientists of any discipline or by those with historical interests in units of measurement such as archaeologists.

The field of phase transitions and critical phenomena continues to be active in research, producing a steady stream of interesting and fruitful results. It has moved into a central place in condensed matter studies.
Statistical physics, and more specifically, the theory of transitions between states of matter, more or less defines what we know about 'everyday' matter and its transformations.
The major aim of this serial is to provide review articles that can serve as standard references for research workers in the field, and for graduate students and others wishing to obtain reliable information on important recent developments.

This volume begins with a description of Alladi Ramakrishnan's remarkable scientific career and his grand vision that led to the creation of The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (MATSCIENCE), in Madras (now Chennai), India, in 1962. The lists of his research publications, his PhD students, and other relevant facts relating to his eventful career are included. The inclusion of both research and survey articles by leading mathematicians, statisticians, and physicists who got to know Alladi Ramakrishnan over the years and admired his significant contributions to research and to the scientific profession, have been written and dedicated in this volume to Ramakrishnan's memory.

Density functional theory (DFT) is by now a well-established method for tackling the quantum mechanics of many-body systems. Originally applied to compute properties of atoms and simple molecules, DFT has quickly become a work horse for more complex applications in the chemical and materials sciences. The present set of lectures, spanning the whole range from basic principles to relativistic and time-dependent extensions of the theory, is the ideal introduction for graduate students or nonspecialist researchers wishing to familiarize themselves with both the basic and most advanced techniques in this field.

Mathematical physics has made enormous strides over the past few decades, with the emergence of many new disciplines and with revolutionary advances in old disciplines. One of the especially interesting features is the link between developments in mathematical physics and in pure mathematics. Many of the exciting advances in mathematics owe their origin to mathematical physics -- superstring theory, for example, has led to remarkable progress in geometry -- while very pure mathematics, such as number theory, has found unexpected applications.

The beginning of a new millennium is an appropriate time to survey the present state of the field and look forward to likely advances in the future. In this book, leading experts give personal views on their subjects and on the wider field of mathematical physics. The topics covered range widely over the whole field, from quantum field theory to turbulence, from the classical three-body problem to non-equilibrium statistical mechanics.

This book provides an elementary introduction to the ideas and methods of topology by the detailed study of certain topics. There are elegant but rigorous proofs of many of the basic theorems, and special attention is given to the results needed in the theory of functions.

This book presents the current knowledge about nonlinear localized travelling excitations in crystals. Excitations can be vibrational, electronic, magnetic or of many other types, in many different types of crystals, as silicates, semiconductors and metals. The book is dedicated to the British scientist FM Russell, recently turned 80. He found 50 years ago that a mineral mica muscovite was able to record elementary charged particles and much later that also some kind of localized excitations, he called them quodons, was also recorded. The tracks, therefore, provide a striking experimental evidence of quodons existence. The first chapter by him presents the state of knowledge in this topic. It is followed by about 18 chapters from world leaders in the field, reviewing different aspects, materials and methods including experiments, molecular dynamics and theory and also presenting the latest results. The last part includes a personal narration of FM Russell of the deciphering of the marks in mica. It provides a unique way to present the science in an accessible way and also illustrates the process of discovery in a scientist's mind.

This book is based on the idea that Boltzmann-like modelling methods can be developed to design, with special attention to applied sciences, kinetic-type models which are called generalized kinetic models. In particular, these models appear in evolution equations for the statistical distribution over the physical state of each individual of a large population. The evolution is determined both by interactions among individuals and by external actions.

Considering that generalized kinetic models can play an important role in dealing with several interesting systems in applied sciences, the book provides a unified presentation of this topic with direct reference to modelling, mathematical statement of problems, qualitative and computational analysis, and applications. Models reported and proposed in the book refer to several fields of natural, applied and technological sciences. In particular, the following classes of models are discussed: population dynamics and socio-economic behaviours, models of aggregation and fragmentation phenomena, models of biology and immunology, traffic flow models, models of mixtures and particles undergoing classic and dissipative interactions.

This book presents a broad survey of models for critical and catastrophic phenomena in the geosciences, with strong emphasis on earthquakes. It assumes the perspective of statistical physics, which provides the theoretical frame for dealing with complex systems in general. This volume addresses graduate students wishing to specialize in the field and researchers working or interested in the field having a background in the physics, geosciences or applied mathematics.

Relationalism about space is a venerable doctrine that is enjoying renewed attention among philosophers and physicists. Relationalists deny that space is ontologically prior to matter and seek to ground all claims about the structure of space in facts about actual and possible configurations of matter. Thus, many relationalists maintain that to say that space is infinite is to say that certain sorts of infinite arrays of material points are possible (even if, in fact, the world contains only a finite amount of matter).
Gordon Belot investigates the distinctive notion of geometric possibility that relationalists rely upon. He examines the prospects for adapting to the geometric case the standard philosophical accounts of the related notion of physical possibility, with particular emphasis on Humean, primitivist, and necessitarian accounts of physical and geometric possibility. This contribution to the debate concerning the nature of space will be of interest not only to philosophers and metaphysicians concerned with space and time, but also to those interested in laws of nature, modal notions, or more general issues in ontology.

One of the mathematical challenges of modern physics lies in the development of new tools to efficiently describe different branches of physics within one mathematical framework. This text introduces precisely such a broad mathematical model, one that gives a clear geometric expression of the symmetry of physical laws and is entirely determined by that symmetry.The first three chapters discuss the occurrence of bounded symmetric domains (BSDs) or homogeneous balls and their algebraic structure in physics. The book further provides a discussion of how to obtain a triple algebraic structure associated to an arbitrary BSD; the relation between the geometry of the domain and the algebraic structure is explored as well. The last chapter contains a classification of BSDs revealing the connection between the classical and the exceptional domains.With its unifying approach to mathematics and physics, this work will be useful for researchers and graduate students interested in the many physical applications of bounded symmetric domains. It will also benefit a wider audience of mathematicians, physicists, and graduate students working in relativity, geometry, and Lie theory.

The Virasoro algebra is an infinite dimensional Lie algebra that plays an increasingly important role in mathematics and theoretical physics. This book describes some fundamental facts about the representation theory of the Virasoro algebra in a self-contained manner. Topics include the structure of Verma modules and Fock modules, the classification of (unitarizable) Harish-Chandra modules, tilting equivalence, and the rational vertex operator algebras associated to the so-called minimal series representations.

Covering a wide range of material, this book has three appendices which provide background information required for some of the chapters. The authors organize fundamental results in a unified way and refine existing proofs. For instance in chapter three, a generalization of Jantzen filtration is reformulated in an algebraic manner, and geometric interpretation is provided. Statements, widely believed to be true, are collated, and results which are known but not verified are proven, such as the corrected structure theorem of Fock modules in chapter eight.

This book will be of interest to a wide range of mathematicians and physicists from the level of graduate students to researchers.

The fourth of a five-volume exposition of the main principles of nonlinear functional analysis and its applications to the natural sciences, economics, and numerical analysis. The presentation is self-contained and accessible to the non-specialist, and topics covered include applications to mechanics, elasticity, plasticity, hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, statistical physics, and special and general relativity including cosmology. The book contains a detailed physical motivation of the relevant basic equations and a discussion of particular problems which have played a significant role in the development of physics and through which important mathematical and physical insight may be gained. It combines classical and modern ideas to build a bridge between the language and thoughts of physicists and mathematicians. Many exercises and a comprehensive bibliography complement the text.

The 1996 NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) followed the international tradi tion of the schools held in Cargese in 1976, 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1991. Impressive progress in quantum field theory had been made since the last school in 1991. Much of it is connected with the interplay of quantum theory and the structure of space time, including canonical gravity, black holes, string theory, application of noncommutative differential geometry, and quantum symmetries. In addition there had recently been important advances in quantum field theory which exploited the electromagnetic duality in certain supersymmetric gauge theories. The school reviewed these developments. Lectures were included to explain how the "monopole equations" of Seiberg and Witten can be exploited. They were presented by E. Rabinovici, and supplemented by an extra 2 hours of lectures by A. Bilal. Both the N = 1 and N = 2 supersymmetric Yang Mills theory and resulting equivalences between field theories with different gauge group were discussed in detail. There are several roads to quantum space time and a unification of quantum theory and gravity. There is increasing evidence that canonical gravity might be a consistent theory after all when treated in. a nonperturbative fashion. H. Nicolai presented a series of introductory lectures. He dealt in detail with an integrable model which is obtained by dimensional reduction in the presence of a symmetry."

"Pseudochaotic Kicked Oscillators: Renormalization, Symbolic Dynamics, and Transport" presents recent developments in pseudochaos, which is concerned with complex branching behaviors of dynamical systems at the interface between orderly and chaotic motion. Pseudochaos is characterized by the trapping of orbits in the vicinity of self-similar hierarchies of islands of stability, producing phase-space displacements which increase asymptotically as a power of time. This monograph is a thorough, self-contained investigation of a simple one-dimensional model (a kicked harmonic oscillator) which exhibits pseudochaos in its purest form. It is intended for graduate students and researchers in physics and applied mathematics, as well as specialists in nonlinear dynamics.
Dr. John H. Lowenstein is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at New York University, USA."

This proceedings volume of the ISEA 2006 examines sports engineering, an interdisciplinary subject which encompasses and integrates not only sports science and engineering but also biomechanics, physiology and anatomy, and motion physics. This is the first title of its kind in the emerging field of sports technology.

Supernovae, their bearing on cosmology and their connection to gamma-ray bursts are now at the center of astrophysical research programs. This volume deals with astronomical observations of supernovae and their relation to nuclear and particle astrophysics. All known aspects of supernovae explosions are investigated in articles specifically written for researchers and advanced graduate students. It also includes recent numerical "experiments" related to the question of hydrodynamical instability in two and three dimensions and to problems concerning the complexity of radiation transport in the models. Other contributions discuss the possible energy sources needed to drive these powerful stellar explosions.

This book covers the topic of eddy current nondestructive evaluation, the most commonly practiced method of electromagnetic nondestructive evaluation (NDE). It emphasizes a clear presentation of the concepts, laws and relationships of electricity and magnetism upon which eddy current inspection methods are founded. The chapters include material on signals obtained using many common eddy current probe types in various testing environments. Introductory mathematical and physical concepts in electromagnetism are introduced in sufficient detail and summarized in the Appendices for easy reference. Worked examples and simple calculations that can be done by hand are distributed throughout the text. These and more complex end-of-chapter examples and assignments are designed to impart a working knowledge of the connection between electromagnetic theory and the practical measurements described. The book is intended to equip readers with sufficient knowledge to optimize routine eddy current NDE inspections, or design new ones. It is useful for graduate engineers and scientists seeking a deeper understanding of electromagnetic methods of NDE than can be found in a guide for practitioners.

The Abdus Salam Memorial Meeting was held from the 19th to the 22nd of November, 1997 on the first anniversary of the death of Prof Abdus Salam, Nobel laureate and Founder-Director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. It was an opportunity for many of his colleagues and students to pay homage to him.

This invaluable volume, comprising the papers presented at the meeting, reflects the long-lasting passion of Prof Salam for the theory of the fundamental forces. Most of the contributions are concerned with recent developments in the theory of superstrings, including duality, D-branes and related topics.

This edition of the invaluable text Modern Differential Geometry for Physicists contains an additional chapter that introduces some of the basic ideas of general topology needed in differential geometry. A number of small corrections and additions have also been made.These lecture notes are the content of an introductory course on modern, coordinate-free differential geometry which is taken by first-year theoretical physics PhD students, or by students attending the one-year MSc course "Quantum Fields and Fundamental Forces" at Imperial College. The book is concerned entirely with mathematics proper, although the emphasis and detailed topics have been chosen bearing in mind the way in which differential geometry is applied these days to modern theoretical physics. This includes not only the traditional area of general relativity but also the theory of Yang-Mills fields, nonlinear sigma models and other types of nonlinear field systems that feature in modern quantum field theory.The volume is divided into four parts: (i) introduction to general topology; (ii) introductory coordinate-free differential geometry; (iii) geometrical aspects of the theory of Lie groups and Lie group actions on manifolds; (iv) introduction to the theory of fibre bundles. In the introduction to differential geometry the author lays considerable stress on the basic ideas of "tangent space structure", which he develops from several different points of view - some geometrical, others more algebraic. This is done with awareness of the difficulty which physics graduate students often experience when being exposed for the first time to the rather abstract ideas of differential geometry.