This book develops a methodology for the real-time coupled quantum dynamics of electrons and phonons in nanostructures, both isolated structures and those open to an environment. It then applies this technique to both fundamental and practical problems that are relevant, in particular, to nanodevice physics, laser-matter interaction, and radiation damage in living tissue. The interaction between electrons and atomic vibrations (phonons) is an example of how a process at the heart of quantum dynamics can impact our everyday lives. This is e.g. how electrical current generates heat, making your toaster work. It is also a key process behind many crucial problems down to the atomic and molecular scale, such as the functionality of nanoscale electronic devices, the relaxation of photo-excited systems, the energetics of systems under irradiation, and thermoelectric effects. Electron-phonon interactions represent a difficult many-body problem. Fairly standard techniques are available for tackling cases in which one of the two subsystems can be treated as a steady-state bath for the other, but determining the simultaneous coupled dynamics of the two poses a real challenge. This book tackles precisely this problem.

This edited, multi-author volume contains selected, peer-reviewed contributions based on the presentations given at the 21th International Workshop on Quantum Systems in Chemistry, Physics, and Biology (QSCP-XXI), held in Vancouver, Canada, in July 2016. This book is primarily aimed at scholars, researchers and graduate students working at universities and scientific laboratories and interested in the structure, properties, dynamics and spectroscopy of atoms, molecules, biological systems and condensed matter.

Since its inception in the famous 1936 paper by Birkhoff and von Neumann entitled "The logic of quantum mechanics" quantum logic, i.e. the logical investigation of quantum mechanics, has undergone an enormous development. Various schools of thought and approaches have emerged and there are a variety of technical results.
Quantum logic is a heterogeneous field of research ranging from investigations which may be termed logical in the traditional sense to studies focusing on structures which are on the border between algebra and logic. For the latter structures the term quantum structures is appropriate.
The chapters of this Handbook, which are authored by the most eminent scholars in the field, constitute a comprehensive presentation of the main schools, approaches and results in the field of quantum logic and quantum structures. Much of the material presented is of recent origin representing the frontier of the subject.
The present volume focuses on quantum structures. Among the structures studied extensively in this volume are, just to name a few, Hilbert lattices, D-posets, effect algebras MV algebras, partially ordered Abelian groups and those structures underlying quantum probability.
- Written by eminent scholars in the field of logic
- A comprehensive presentation of the theory, approaches and results in the field of quantum logic
- Volume focuses on quantum structures

This thesis uses high-precision single-photon experiments to shed new light on the role of reality, causality, and uncertainty in quantum mechanics. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the current understanding of quantum foundations and details three influential experiments that significantly advance our understanding of three core aspects of this problem. The first experiment demonstrates that the quantum wavefunction is part of objective reality, if there is any such reality in our world. The second experiment shows that quantum correlations cannot be explained in terms of cause and effect, even when considering superluminal influences between measurement outcomes. The final experiment in this thesis demonstrates a novel uncertainty relation for joint quantum measurements, where the textbook relation does not apply.

This book presents concepts of theoretical physics with engineering applications. The topics are of an intense mathematical nature involving tools like probability and random processes, ordinary and partial differential equations, linear algebra and infinite-dimensional operator theory, perturbation theory, stochastic differential equations, and Riemannian geometry. These mathematical tools have been applied to study problems in mechanics, fluid dynamics, quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, nonlinear dynamical systems, general relativity, cosmology, and electrodynamics. A particularly interesting topic of research interest developed in this book is the design of quantum unitary gates of large size using the Feynman diagrammatic approach to quantum field theory. Through this book, the reader will be able to observe how basic physics can revolutionize technology and also how diverse branches of mathematical physics like large deviation theory, quantum field theory, general relativity, and electrodynamics have many common issues that provide the starting point for unifying the whole of physics, namely in the formulation of Grand Unified Theories (GUTS).

"What Bodanis does brilliantly is to give us a feel for Einstein as a person. I don't think I've ever read a book that does this as well . . . Whenever there's a chance for storytelling, Bodanis triumphs." --Popular Science "Fascinating." --Forbes Widely considered the greatest genius of all time, Albert Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos with his general theory of relativity and helped lead us into the atomic age. Yet in the final decades of his life, he was ignored by most working scientists, and his ideas were opposed by even his closest friends. How did this happen? Best-selling biographer David Bodanis traces the arc of Einstein's life--from the skeptical, erratic student to the world's most brilliant physicist to the fallen-from-grace celebrity. An intimate biography in which "theories of the universe morph into theories of life" (Times, London), Einstein's Greatest Mistake reveals what we owe Einstein today--and how much more he might have achieved if not for his all-too-human flaws.

This book presents the better understanding of infrared structures of particle scattering processes in quantum electrodynamics (QED) in four-dimensional spacetime. An S-matrix is the fundamental quantity in scattering theory. However, if a theory involves massless particles, such as QED and gravity, the conventional S-matrix has not been well defined due to the infrared divergence, and infrared dynamics thus needs to be understood in-depth to figure out the S-matrix. The book begins with introducing fundamental nature of the charge conservation law associated with asymptotic symmetry, and explaining its relations to soft theorems and memory effect. Subsequently it looks into an appropriate asymptotic state of the S-matrix without infrared divergences. The Faddeev-Kulish dressed state is known as a candidate of such a state, and its gauge invariant condition and its relation to the asymptotic symmetry are discussed. It offers an important building blocks for constructing the S-matrix without infrared divergences.

This thesis focuses on nonlinear spectroscopy from a quantum optics perspective. First, it provides a detailed introduction to nonlinear optical signals; starting from Glauber's photon counting formalism, it establishes the diagrammatic formulation, which forms the backbone of nonlinear molecular spectroscopy. The main body of the thesis investigates the impact of quantum correlations in entangled photon states on two-photon transitions, with a particular focus on the time-energy uncertainty, which restricts the possible simultaneous time and frequency resolution in measurements. It found that this can be violated with entangled light for individual transitions. The thesis then presents simulations of possible experimental setups that could exploit this quantum advantage. The final chapter is devoted to an application of the rapidly growing field of multidimensional spectroscopy to trapped ion chains, where it is employed to investigate nonequilibrium properties in quantum simulations.

This book is an introduction to the field of constrained Hamiltonian systems and their quantization, a topic which is of central interest to theoretical physicists who wish to obtain a deeper understanding of the quantization of gauge theories, such as describing the fundamental interactions in nature. Beginning with the early work of Dirac, the book covers the main developments in the field up to more recent topics, such as the field-antifield formalism of Batalin and Vilkovisky, including a short discussion of how gauge anomalies may be incorporated into this formalism. All topics are well illustrated with examples emphasizing points of central interest. The book should enable graduate students to follow the literature on this subject without much problems, and to perform research in this field.

How to Understand Quantum Mechanics presents an accessible introduction to understanding quantum mechanics in a natural and intuitive way, which was advocated by Erwin Schroedinger and Albert Einstein. A theoretical physicist reveals dozens of easy tricks that avoid long calculations, makes complicated things simple, and bypasses the worthless anguish of famous scientists who died in angst. The author's approach is light-hearted, and the book is written to be read without equations, however all relevant equations still appear with explanations as to what they mean. The book entertainingly rejects quantum disinformation, the MKS unit system (obsolete), pompous non-explanations, pompous people, the hoax of the 'uncertainty principle' (it is just a math relation), and the accumulated junk-DNA that got into the quantum operating system by misreporting it. The order of presentation is new and also unique by warning about traps to be avoided, while separating topics such as quantum probability to let the Schroedinger equation be appreciated in the simplest way on its own terms. This is also the first book on quantum theory that is not based on arbitrary and confusing axioms or foundation principles. The author is so unprincipled he shows where obsolete principles duplicated basic math facts, became redundant, and sometimes were just pawns in academic turf wars. The book has many original topics not found elsewhere, and completely researched references to original historical sources and anecdotes concerting the unrecognized scientists who actually did discover things, did not all get Nobel prizes, and yet had interesting productive lives.

Bose-Einstein condensation of dilute gases is an exciting new field of interdisciplinary physics. The eight chapters in this volume introduce its theoretical and experimental foundations. The authors are lucid expositors who have also made outstanding contributions to the field. They include theorists Tony Leggett, Allan Griffin and Keith Burnett, and Nobel-Prize-winning experimentalist Bill Phillips. In addition to the introductory material, there are articles treating topics at the forefront of research, such as experimental quantum phase engineering of condensates, the "superchemistry" of interacting atomic and molecular condensates, and atom laser theory.

In this revolutionary work, the author sets the stage for the science of
the 21st Century, pursuing an unprecedented synthesis of fields previously
considered unrelated. Beginning with simple classical concepts, he ends
with a complex multidisciplinary theory requiring a high level of
abstraction. The work progresses across the sciences in several
multidisciplinary directions: Mathematical logic, fundamental physics,
computer science and the theory of intelligence. Extraordinarily enough,
the author breaks new ground in all these fields.

In the field of
fundamental physics the author reaches the revolutionary conclusion that
physics can be viewed and studied as logic in a fundamental sense, as
compared with Einstein's view of physics as space-time geometry. This opens
new, exciting prospects for the study of fundamental interactions. A
formulation of logic in terms of matrix operators and logic vector spaces
allows the author to tackle for the first time the intractable problem of
cognition in a scientific manner. In the same way as the findings of
Heisenberg and Dirac in the 1930s provided a conceptual and mathematical
foundation for quantum physics, matrix operator logic supports an important
breakthrough in the study of the physics of the mind, which is interpreted
as a fractal of quantum mechanics. Introducing a concept of logic quantum
numbers, the author concludes that the problem of logic and the
intelligence code in general can be effectively formulated as eigenvalue
problems similar to those of theoretical physics. With this important leap
forward in the study of the mechanism of mind, the author concludes that
the latter cannot be fully understood either within classical or quantum
notions. A higher-order covariant theory is required to accommodate the
fundamental effect of high-level intelligence. The landmark results
obtained by the author will have implications and repercussions for the
very foundations of science as a whole. Moreover, Stern's Matrix Logic is
suitable for a broad spectrum of practical applications in contemporary
technologies.

This thesis presents several important aspects of the plasma dynamics in extremely high intensity electromagnetic fields when quantum electrodynamics effects have to be taken into account. This work is of utmost importance for the forthcoming generation of multipetawatt laser facilities where this physics will be tested. The first part consists of an introduction that extends from classical and quantum electrodynamics in strong fields to the kinetic description of plasmas in the interaction with such fields. This can be considered as an advanced tutorial which would be extremely useful to researchers and students new to the field. The second part describes original contributions on the analysis of the signatures of classical and quantum radiation reaction on the distribution function of the charged particles and of the photon spectrum, and leads to significant advances on this topic. These results are then extended to the analysis of the so-called QED cascades which are of central importance for a better understanding of some astrophysical phenomena and basic physics problems. Finally, the book discusses future directions for the high intensity laser-plasma interaction community. The results presented in this thesis are expected to become more and more relevant as the new multipetawatt facilities become operative.

This thesis introduces a new theoretical tool to explore the notion of time and temporal order in quantum mechanics: the relativistic quantum "clock" framework. It proposes novel thought experiments showing that proper time can display quantum features, e.g. when a "clock" runs different proper times in superposition. The resulting new physical effects can be tested in near-future laboratory experiments (with atoms, molecules and photons as "clocks"). The notion of time holds the key to the regime where quantum theory and general relativity overlap, which has not been directly tested yet and remains largely unexplored by the theory. The framework also applies to scenarios in which causal relations between events become non-classical and which were previously considered impossible to address without refuting quantum theory. The relativistic quantum "clock" framework offers new insights into the foundations of quantum theory and general relativity.

The series Topics in Current Chemistry Collections presents critical reviews from the journal Topics in Current Chemistry organized in topical volumes. The scope of coverage is all areas of chemical science including the interfaces with related disciplines such as biology, medicine and materials science. The goal of each thematic volume is to give the non-specialist reader, whether in academia or industry, a comprehensive insight into an area where new research is emerging which is of interest to a larger scientific audience. Each review within the volume critically surveys one aspect of that topic and places it within the context of the volume as a whole. The most significant developments of the last 5 to 10 years are presented using selected examples to illustrate the principles discussed. The coverage is not intended to be an exhaustive summary of the field or include large quantities of data, but should rather be conceptual, concentrating on the methodological thinking that will allow the non-specialist reader to understand the information presented. Contributions also offer an outlook on potential future developments in the field.

The Conference on Quantum Mechanics, Elementary Particles, Quantum Cosmology and Complexity was held in honour of Professor Murray Gell-Mann's 80th birthday in Singapore on 24-26 February 2010. The conference paid tribute to Professor Gell-Mann's great achievements in the elementary particle physics.This notable birthday volume contains the presentations made at the conference by many eminent scientists, including Nobel laureates C N Yang, G 't Hooft and K Wilson. Other invited speakers include G Zweig, N Samios, M Karliner, G Karl, M Shifman, J Ellis, S Adler and A Zichichi.About Murray Gell-MannMurray Gell-Mann, born September 15, 1929, won the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles.His contributions span the entire history of particle physics, from the early days of the particle zoo to the modern day QCD. Along the way, even as he proposed new quantum numbers to bring order into the zoo, he had fun in naming them. And thus was born Strangeness, Flavor, Hadrons, Baryons, Leptons, the Eightfold Way, Color, Quarks, Gluons and, with Harald Fritzsch, the standard field theory of strong interactions, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD).He also proposed with Richard Feynman the V-A theory of beta decay. Gell-Mann discovered the Current Algebra, proposed (with Levy) the sigma model of pions and the see-saw mechanism for the neutrino masses.

This volume presents the proceedings of the International Conference on Trapped Charged Particles and Fundamental Physics (TCP 14). It presents recent developments in the theoretical and experimental research on trapped charged particles and related fundamental physics and applications. The content has been divided topic-wise covering basic questions of Fundamental Physics, Quantum and QED Effects, Plasmas and Collective Behavior and Anti-Hydrogen. More technical issues include Storage Ring Physics, Precision Spectroscopy and Frequency Standards, Highly Charged Ions in Traps, Traps for Radioactive Isotopes and New Techniques and Facilities. An applied aspect of ion trapping is discussed in section devoted to Applications of Particle Trapping including Quantum Information and Processing. Each topic has a more general introduction, but also more detailed contributions are included. A selection of contributions exemplifies the interdisciplinary nature of the research on trapped charged particles worldwide. Reprinted from Hyperfine Interactions (HYPE) Volumes 235, Issue 1-3 and 236, Issue 1-3.

Perturbative Algebraic Quantum Field Theory (pAQFT), the subject of this book, is a complete and mathematically rigorous treatment of perturbative quantum field theory (pQFT) that doesn't require the use of divergent quantities and works on a large class of Lorenzian manifolds. We discuss in detail the examples of scalar fields, gauge theories and the effective quantum gravity. pQFT models describe a wide range of physical phenomena and have remarkable agreement with experimental results. Despite this success, the theory suffers from many conceptual problems. pAQFT is a good candidate to solve many, if not all, of these conceptual problems. Chapters 1-3 provide some background in mathematics and physics. Chapter 4 concerns classical theory of the scalar field, which is subsequently quantized in chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 7 covers gauge theory and chapter 8 discusses effective quantum gravity. The book aims to be accessible to researchers and graduate students, who are interested in the mathematical foundations of pQFT.

This second edition of the outstanding monograph on coherent states by Combescure and Robert published in 2012 is enriched with figures, historical information and numerical simulations and enlarged with five new chapters presenting important rigorous results obtained in the recent years. The new chapters include various applications such as to the time dependent Schroedinger equation and the Ehrenfest time, to the growth of norms and energy exchanges, to chaotic systems and classical systems with quantum ergodic behavior, and to open quantum systems, and to adiabatic decoupling for multicomponent systems Overall, this book presents the various types of coherent states introduced and studied in the physics and mathematics literature and describes their properties together with application to quantum physics problems. It is intended to serve as a compendium on coherent states and their applications for physicists and mathematicians, stretching from the basic mathematical structures of generalized coherent states in the sense of Perelomov via the semiclassical evolution of coherent states to various specific examples of coherent states (hydrogen atom, quantum oscillator, etc.). It goes beyond existing books on coherent states in terms of a rigorous mathematical framework

In modern physics, the classical vacuum of tranquil nothingness has been replaced by a quantum vacuum with fluctuations of measurable consequence. In The Quantum Vacuum, Peter Milonni describes the concept of the vacuum in quantum physics with an emphasis on quantum electrodynamics. He elucidates in depth and detail the role of the vacuum electromagnetic field in spontaneous emission, the Lamb shift, van der Waals, and Casimir forces, and a variety of other phenomena, some of which are of technological as well as purely scientific importance.
This informative text also provides an introduction based on fundamental vacuum processes to the ideas of relativistic quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory, including renormalization and Feynman diagrams. Experimental as well as theoreticalaspects of the quantum vacuum are described, and in most cases details of mathematical derivations are included.
Chapter 1 of The Quantum Vacuum - published in advance in "The American Journal of Physics" (1991)-was later selected by readers as one of the Most Memorable papers ever published in the 60-year history of the journal. This chapter provides anexcellent beginning of the book, introducing a wealth of information of historical interest, the results of which are carefully woven into subsequent chapters to form a coherent whole.
Key Features
* Does not assume that the reader has taken advanced graduate courses, making the text accessible to beginning graduate students
* Emphasizes the basic physical ideas rather than the formal, mathematical aspects of the subject
* Provides a careful and thorough treatment of Casimir and van der Waals forces at a level of detail not found in any other book on this topic
* Clearly presents mathematical derivations

This marvelous book is aimed at strengthening the mathematical background and sharpening the mathematical tools of students without rigorous training before taking the quantum mechanics course. The abstract construction of quantum postulates in the framework of Hilbert space and Hermitian operators are realized by q-representation in the formulation to demonstrate the conventional approach to quantum theory.

Symmetry property is emphasized and extensively explored in this book both in continuous transformations as well as in the discrete ones. The space-time structure is discussed in depth and Dirac equation is formulated by symmetry consideration of Lorentz group.

This monograph takes stock of the situation in higher spin gauge theories for the first time. Besides a thorough recapitulation of the field's history, it reviews the progress that has been made and offers a pedagogical introduction to the subject. Abstract approaches to the theory are offered to facilitate a conceptual rethinking of the main problems and to help see patterns hidden by heavy formalism.

This volume offers a fundamentally different way of conceptualizing time and reality. Today, we see time predominantly as the linear-sequential order of events, and reality accordingly as consisting of facts that can be ordered along sequential time. But what if this conceptualization has us mistaking the "exhausts" for the "real thing", i.e. if we miss the best, the actual taking place of reality as it occurs in a very differently structured, primordial form of time, the time-space of the present? In this new conceptual framework, both the sequential aspect of time and the factual aspect of reality are emergent phenomena that come into being only after reality has actually taken place. In the new view, facts are just the "traces" that the actual taking place of reality leaves behind on the co-emergent "canvas'' of local spacetime. Local spacetime itself emerges only as facts come into being - and only facts can be adequately localized in it. But, how does reality then actually occur? It is conceived as a "constellatory self-unfolding", characterized by strong self-referentiality, and taking place in the primordial form of time, the not yet sequentially structured "time-space of the present". Time is seen here as an ontophainetic platform, i.e. as the stage on which reality can first occur. This view of time (and, thus, also space) seems to be very much in accordance with what we encounter in quantum physics before the so-called collapse of the wave function. In parallel, classical and relativistic physics largely operate within the factual portrait of reality, and the sequential aspect of time, respectively. Only singularities constitute an important exemption: here the canvas of local spacetime - that emerged together with factization - melts down again. In the novel framework quantum reduction and singularities can be seen and addressed as inverse transitions: In quantum physical state reduction reality "gains" the chrono-ontological format of facticity, and the sequential aspect of time becomes applicable. In singularities, by contrast, the inverse happens: Reality loses its local spacetime formation and reverts back into its primordial, pre-local shape - making in this way the use of causality relations, Boolean logic and the dichotomization of subject and object obsolete. For our understanding of the relation between quantum and relativistic physics this new view opens up fundamentally new perspectives: Both are legitimate views of time and reality, they just address very different chrono-ontological portraits, and thus should not lead us to erroneously subjugating one view under the other. The task of the book is to provide a formal framework in which this radically different view of time and reality can be addressed properly. The mathematical approach is based on the logical and topological features of the Borromean Rings. It draws upon concepts and methods of algebraic and geometric topology - especially the theory of sheaves and links, group theory, logic and information theory, in relation to the standard constructions employed in quantum mechanics and general relativity, shedding new light on the pestilential problems of their compatibility. The intended audience includes physicists, mathematicians and philosophers with an interest in the conceptual and mathematical foundations of modern physics.

This book is about dark matter's particle nature and the implications of a new symmetry that appears when a hypothetical dark matter particle is heavy compared to known elementary particles. Dark matter exists and composes about 85% of the matter in the universe, but it cannot be explained in terms of the known elementary particles. Discovering dark matter's particle nature is one of the most pressing open problems in particle physics. This thesis derives the implications of a new symmetry that appears when the hypothetical dark matter particle is heavy compared to the known elementary particles, a situation which is well motivated by the null results of searches at the LHC and elsewhere. The new symmetry predicts a universal interaction between dark matter and ordinary matter, which in turn may be used to determine the event rate and detectable energy in dark matter direct detection experiments. The computation of heavy wino and higgsino dark matter presented in this work has become a benchmark for the field of direct detection. This thesis has also spawned a new field of investigation in dark matter indirect detection, determining heavy WIMP annihilation rates using effective field theory methods. It describes a new formalism for implementing Lorentz invariance constraints in nonrelativistic theories, with a surprising result at 1/M^4 order that contradicts the prevailing ansatz in the past 20 years of heavy quark literature. The author has also derived new perturbative QCD results to provide the definitive analysis of key Standard Model observables such as heavy quark scalar matrix elements of the nucleon. This is an influential thesis, with impacts in dark matter phenomenology, field theory formalism and precision hadronic physics.

This book collects research papers on the philosophical foundations of probability, causality, spacetime and quantum theory. The papers are related to talks presented in six subsequent workshops organized by The Budapest-Krakow Research Group on Probability, Causality and Determinism. Coverage consists of three parts. Part I focuses on the notion of probability from a general philosophical and formal epistemological perspective. Part II applies probabilistic considerations to address causal questions in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Part III investigates the question of indeterminism in spacetime theories. It also explores some related questions, such as decidability and observation. The contributing authors are all philosophers of science with a strong background in mathematics or physics. They believe that paying attention to the finer formal details often helps avoiding pitfalls that exacerbate the philosophical problems that are in the center of focus of contemporary research. The papers presented here help make explicit the mathematical-structural assumptions that underlie key philosophical argumentations. This formally rigorous and conceptually precise approach will appeal to researchers and philosophers as well as mathematicians and statisticians.