A deeper understanding of neutrinos, with the goal to reveal their nature and exact role within particle physics, is at the frontier of current research. This book reviews the field in a concise fashion and highlights the most pressing issues and areas of strongest topical interest. It provides a clear, self-contained, and logical treatment of the fundamental physics aspects, appropriate for graduate students. Starting with the relevant basics of the SM, neutrinos are introduced, and the quantum mechanical effect of oscillations is explained in detail. A strong focus is then set on the phenomenon of lepton number violation, especially in 0nbb decay, as the crucial probe to understand the nature of neutrinos. The role of neutrinos in astrophysics, expected to be of increasing importance for future research, is then described. Finally, models to explain the neutrino properties are outlined. The central theme of the book is the nature of neutrino masses and the above topics will revolve around this issue.

A standard view of elementary particles and forces is that they determine everything else in the rest of physics, the whole of chemistry, biology, geology, physiology and perhaps even human behavior.This reductive view of physics is popular among some physicists. Yet, there are other physicists who argue this is an oversimplified and that the relationship of elementary particle physics to these other domains is one of emergence. Several objections have been raised from physics against proposals for emergence (e.g., that genuinely emergent phenomena would violate the standard model of elementary particle physics, or that genuine emergence would disrupt the lawlike order physics has revealed). Many of these objections rightly call into question typical conceptions of emergence found in the philosophy literature. This book explores whether physics points to a reductive or an emergent structure of the world and proposes a physics-motivated conception of emergence that leaves behind many of the problematic intuitions shaping the philosophical conceptions. Examining several detailed case studies reveal that the structure of physics and the practice of physics research are both more interesting than is captured in this reduction/emergence debate. The results point to stability conditions playing a crucial though underappreciated role in the physics of emergence. This contextual emergence has thought-provoking consequences for physics and beyond, and will be of interest to physics students, researchers, as well as those interested in physics.

Volume 1 of this three-part series introduces the fundamental concepts of quantum field theory using the formalism of canonical quantization. This volume is intended for use as a text for an introductory quantum field theory course that can include both particle and condensed matter physics students. Dr. Strickland starts with a brief review of classical field theory and uses this as a jumping off point for the quantization of classical field, thereby promoting them to proper quantum fields. He then presents the formalism for real and complex scalar field theories, fermion field quantization, gauge field quantization, toy models of the nuclear interaction, and finally the full Lagrangian for QED and its renormalization. Part of IOP Series in Nuclear Medicine.

The transport of electric charge through most materials is well described in terms of their electronic band structure. The present book deals with two cases where the charge transport in a solid is not described by the simple band structure picture of the solid. These cases are related to the phenomena of the quantum Hall effect and superconductivity. Part I of this book deals with the quantum Hall effect, which is a consequence of the behavior of electrons in solids when they are constrained to move in two dimensions. Part II of the present volume describes the behavior of superconductors, where electrons are bound together in Cooper pairs and travel through a material without resistance.

This book provides an introduction to the emerging field of quantum thermodynamics, with particular focus on its relation to quantum information and its implications for quantum computers and next generation quantum technologies. The text, aimed at graduate level physics students with a working knowledge of quantum mechanics and statistical physics, provides a brief overview of the development of classical thermodynamics and its quantum formulation in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 then explores typical thermodynamic settings, such as cycles and work extraction protocols, when the working material is genuinely quantum. Finally, Chapter 3 explores the thermodynamics of quantum information processing and introduces the reader to some more state of-the-art topics in this exciting and rapidly developing research field.

The complexity and vulnerability of the human body has driven the development of a diverse range of diagnostic and therapeutic techniques in modern medicine. The Nuclear Medicine procedures of Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) and Radionuclide Therapy are well-established in clinical practice and are founded upon the principles of radiation physics. This book will offer an insight into the physics of nuclear medicine by explaining the principles of radioactivity, how radionuclides are produced and administered as radiopharmaceuticals to the body and how radiation can be detected and used to produce images for diagnosis. The treatment of diseases such as thyroid cancer, hyperthyroidism and lymphoma by radionuclide therapy will also be explored.

The growing number of scientific and technological applications of plasma physics in the field of Aerospace Engineering requires that graduate students and professionals understand their principles. This introductory book is the expanded version of class notes of lectures I taught for several years to students of Aerospace Engineering and Physics. It is intended as a reading guide, addressed to students and non-specialists to tackle later with more advanced texts. To make the subject more accessible the book does not follow the usual organization of standard textbooks in this field and is divided in two parts. The first introduces the basic kinetic theory (molecular collisions, mean free path, etc.) of neutral gases in equilibrium in connection to the undergraduate physics courses. The basic properties of ionized gases and plasmas (Debye length, plasma frequencies, etc.) are addressed in relation to their equilibrium states and the collisional processes at the microscopic level. The physical description of short and long-range (Coulomb) collisions and the more relevant collisions (elementary processes) between electrons' ions and neutral atoms or molecules are discussed. The second part introduces the physical description of plasmas as a statistical system of interacting particles introducing advanced concepts of kinetic theory, (non-equilibrium distribution functions, Boltzmann collision operator, etc). The fluid transport equations for plasmas of electron ions and neutral atoms and the hydrodynamic models of interest in space science and plasma technology are derived. The plasma production in the laboratory in the context of the physics of electric breakdown is also discussed. Finally, among the myriad of aerospace applications of plasma physics, the low pressure microwave electron multipactor breakdown and plasma thrusters for space propulsion are presented in two separate chapters.

The effect which now bears his name, was discovered in 1958 by Rudolf Moessbauer at the Technical University of Munich. At first, this appeared to be a phenomenon related to nuclear energy levels that provided some information about excited state lifetimes and quantum properties. However, it soon became apparent that Moessbauer spectroscopy had applications in such diverse fields as general relativity, solid state physics, chemistry, materials science, biology, medical physics, archeology and art. It is the extreme sensitivity of the effect to the atomic environment around the probe atom as well as the ability to apply the technique to some interesting and important elements, most notably iron, that is responsible for the Moessbauer effect's extensive use. The present volume reviews the historical development of the Moessbauer effect, the experimental details, the basic physics of hyperfine interactions and some of the numerous applications of Moessbauer effect spectroscopy.

Electrostatic Accelerators have been at the forefront of modern technology since the development by Sir John Cockroft and Ernest Walton in 1932 of the first accelerator, which was the first to achieve nuclear transmutation and earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1951. The applications of Cockroft and Walton's development have been far reaching, even into our kitchens where it is employed to generate the high voltage needed for the magnetron in microwave ovens. Other electrostatic accelerator related Nobel prize winning developments that have had a major socio-economic impact are; the electron microscope where the beams of electrons are produced by an electrostatic accelerator, X-rays and computer tomography (CT) scanners where the X-rays are produced using an electron accelerator and microelectronic technology where ion implantation is used to dope the semiconductor chips which form the basis of our computers, mobile phones and entertainment systems. Although the Electrostatic Accelerator field is over 90 years old, and only a handful of accelerators are used for their original purpose in nuclear physics, the field and the number of accelerators is growing more rapidly than ever. The objective of this book is to collect together the basic science and technology that underlies the Electrostatic Accelerator field so it can serve as a handbook, reference guide and textbook for accelerator engineers as well as students and researchers who work with Electrostatic Accelerators.

Terahertz (THz) radiation with frequencies between 100 GHz and 30 THz has developed into an important tool of science and technology, with numerous applications in materials characterization, imaging, sensor technologies, and telecommunications. Recent progress in THz generation has provided ultrashort THz pulses with electric field amplitudes of up to several megavolts/cm. This development opens the new research field of nonlinear THz spectroscopy in which strong light-matter interactions are exploited to induce quantum excitations and/or charge transport and follow their nonequilibrium dynamics in time-resolved experiments. This book introduces methods of THz generation and nonlinear THz spectroscopy in a tutorial way, discusses the relevant theoretical concepts, and presents prototypical, experimental, and theoretical results in condensed matter physics. The potential of nonlinear THz spectroscopy is illustrated by recent research, including an overview of the relevant literature.

Our understanding of subatomic particles developed over many years, although a clear picture of the different particles, their interactions and their inter-relationships only emerged in the latter part of the twentieth century. The first "subatomic particles" to be investigated were those which exhibit readily observable macroscopic behavior, specifically these are the photon, which we observe as light and the electron, which is manifested as electricity. The true nature of these particles, however, only became clear within the last century or so. The development of the Standard Model provided clarification of the way in which various particles, specifically the hadrons, relate to one another and the way in which their properties are determined by their structure. The final piece, perhaps, of the final model, that is the means by which some particles acquire mass, has just recently been clarified with the observation of the Higgs boson. Since the 1970s it has been known that the measured solar neutrino flux was inconsistent with the flux predicted by solar models. The existence of neutrinos with mass would allow for neutrino flavor oscillations and would provide an explanation for this discrepancy. Only in the past few years, has there been clear experimental evidence that neutrinos have mass. The description of particle structure on the basis of the Standard Model, along with recent discoveries concerning neutrino properties, provides us with a comprehensive picture of the properties of subatomic particles. Part I of the present book provides an overview of the Standard Model of particle physics including an overview of the discovery and properties of the Higgs boson. Part II of the book summarizes the important investigations into the physics of neutrinos and provides an overview of the interpretation of these studies.

The International Linear Collider (ILC) is a mega-scale, technically complex project, requiring large financial resources and cooperation of thousands of scientists and engineers from all over the world. Such a big and expensive project has to be discussed publicly, and the planned goals have to be clearly formulated. This book advocates for the demand for the project, motivated by the current situation in particle physics. The natural and most powerful way of obtaining new knowledge in particle physics is to build a new collider with a larger energy. In this approach, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was created and is now operating at the world record center of-mass energy of 13 TeV. Although the design of colliders with a larger energy of 50-100 TeV has been discussed, the practical realization of such a project is not possible for another 20-30 years. Of course, many new results are expected from LHC over the next decade. However, we must also think about other opportunities, and in particular, about the construction of more dedicated experiments. There are many potentially promising projects, however, the most obvious possibility to achieve significant progress in particle physics in the near future is the construction of a linear e+e- collider with energies in the range (250-1000) GeV. Such a project, the ILC, is proposed to be built in Kitakami, Japan. This book will discuss why this project is important and which new discoveries can be expected with this collider.