Topology is the study of properties of geometrical objects that remain invariant as the object is bent, twisted, or otherwise continuously deformed. It has been an indispensable tool in particle physics and solid state physics for decades, but in recent years it has become increasingly relevant in classical and quantum optics as well. It makes appearances through such diverse phenomena as Pancharatnam-Berry phases, optical vortices and solitons, and optical simulations of solid-state topological phenomena. This book concisely provides the necessary mathematical background needed to understand these developments and to give a rapid survey of some of the optical applications where topological issues arise.

Few-body physics covers a rich and wide variety of phenomena, ranging from the very lowest energy scales of atomic and molecular physics to high-energy particle physics. The papers contained in the present volume provide an apercu of recent progress in the field from both the theoretical and experimental perspectives and are based on work presented at the "22nd International Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics". This book is geared towards academics and graduate students involved in the study of systems which present few-body characteristics and those interested in the related mathematical and computational techniques.

This volume covers invited papers presented during the La Rabida 2015 International Scientific Meeting on Nuclear Physics, which can be considered heir of a well known series of triennial international summer schools on Nuclear Physics organized from 1982 till 2003 by the Basic Nuclear Physics group in the University of Sevilla. The La Rabida 2015 meeting offered to graduate students and young researchers a broad view of the field of Nuclear Physics. The first invited speaker presented the state-of-the-art of Relativistic Mean Field calculations. The second set of notes covers selected topics in gamma ray spectroscopy with exotic nuclei. The third speaker presented an introduction to the subject of severe accidents in nuclear power plants. In the fourth set of notes, the author illustrated how to use laser spectroscopy to determine very important observables of atomic nuclei. The fifth speaker devoted its notes to explain several aspects of neutrino physics. Finally, the sixth speaker presented an overview of nuclear medicine and radiodiagnostic. In addition to this, the inclusion of the posters and seminars presented by the students gives a fresh and ample perspective on the many different problems of interest nowadays for the Nuclear Physics community.

Neutron Scattering - Magnetic and Quantum Phenomena provides detailed coverage of the application of neutron scattering in condensed matter research. The book's primary aim is to enable researchers in a particular area to identify the aspects of their work where neutron scattering techniques might contribute, conceive the important experiments to be done, assess what is required to carry them out, write a successful proposal for one of the major user facilities, and perform the experiments under the guidance of the appropriate instrument scientist. An earlier series edited by Kurt Skoeld and David L. Price, and published in the 1980s by Academic Press as three volumes in the series Methods of Experimental Physics, was very successful and remained the standard reference in the field for several years. This present work has similar goals, taking into account the advances in experimental techniques over the past quarter-century, for example, neutron reflectivity and spin-echo spectroscopy, and techniques for probing the dynamics of complex materials of technological relevance. This volume complements Price and Fernandez-Alonso (Eds.), Neutron Scattering - Fundamentals published in November 2013.

This textbook provides an introduction to radiation, the principles of interaction between radiation and matter, and the exploitation of those principles in the design of modern radiation detectors. Both radiation and detectors are given equal attention and their interplay is carefully laid out with few assumptions made about the prior knowledge of the student. Part I is dedicated to radiation, broadly interpreted in terms of energy and type, starting with an overview of particles and forces, an extended review of common natural and man-made sources of radiation, and an introduction to particle accelerators. Particular attention is paid to real life examples, which place the types of radiation and their energy in context. Dosimetry is presented from a modern, user-led point of view, and relativistic kinematics is introduced to give the basic knowledge needed to handle the more formal aspects of radiation dynamics and interaction. The explanation of the physics principles of interaction between radiation and matter is given significant space to allow a deeper understanding of the various technologies based on those principles. Following an introduction to the ionisation mechanism, detectors are introduced in Part II, grouped according to the physical principle that underpins their functionality, with chapters covering gaseous detectors, semiconductor detectors, the scintillation process and light detectors. The final two chapters describe the phenomenology of showers and the design of calorimeters, and cover additional phenomena including Cherenkov and transition radiation and the detection of neutrinos. An appendix offers the reader a useful review of statistics and probability distributions. The mathematical formalism is kept to a minimum throughout and simple derivations are presented to guide the reasoning and facilitate understanding of the working principles. The book is unique in its wide scope and introductory level, and is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students in physics and engineering. The reader will acquire an awareness of how radiation and its exploitation are becoming increasingly relevant in the modern world, with over 140 experimental figures, detector schematics and photographs helping to relate the material to a broader research context.

The discovery in 2012 of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) represents a milestone for the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. Most of the SM Higgs production and decay rates have been measured at the LHC with increased precision. However, despite its experimental success, the SM is known to be only an effective manifestation of a more fundamental description of nature. The scientific research at the LHC is strongly focused on extending the SM by searching, directly or indirectly, for indications of New Physics. The extensive physics program requires increasingly advanced computational and algorithmic techniques. In the last decades, Machine Learning (ML) methods have made a prominent appearance in the field of particle physics, and promise to address many challenges faced by the LHC. This thesis presents the analysis that led to the observation of the SM Higgs boson decay into pairs of bottom quarks. The analysis exploits the production of a Higgs boson associated with a vector boson whose signatures enable efficient triggering and powerful background reduction. The main strategy to maximise the signal sensitivity is based on a multivariate approach. The analysis is performed on a dataset corresponding to a luminosity of 79.8/fb collected by the ATLAS experiment during Run-2 at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. An excess of events over the expected background is found with an observed (expected) significance of 4.9 (4.3) standard deviation. A combination with results from other \Hbb searches provides an observed (expected) significance of 5.4 (5.5). The corresponding ratio between the signal yield and the SM expectation is 1.01 +- 0.12 (stat.)+ 0.16-0.15(syst.). The 'observation' analysis was further extended to provide a finer interpretation of the V H(H bb) signal measurement. The cross sections for the VH production times the H bb branching ratio have been measured in exclusive regions of phase space. These measurements are used to search for possible deviations from the SM with an effective field theory approach, based on anomalous couplings of the Higgs boson. The results of the cross-section measurements, as well as the constraining of the operators that affect the couplings of the Higgs boson to the vector boson and the bottom quarks, have been documented and discussed in this thesis. This thesis also describes a novel technique for the fast simulation of the forward calorimeter response, based on similarity search methods. Such techniques constitute a branch of ML and include clustering and indexing methods that enable quick and efficient searches for vectors similar to each other. The new simulation approach provides optimal results in terms of detector resolution response and reduces the computational requirements of a standard particles simulation.

The book describes developments in the crystal growth of bulk II-VI semiconductor materials. A fundamental, systematic, and in-depth study of the physical vapor transport (PVT) growth process is the key to producing high-quality single crystals of semiconductors. As such, the book offers a comprehensive overview of the extensive studies on ZnSe and related II-VI wide bandgap compound semiconductors, such as CdS, CdTe, ZnTe, ZnSeTe and ZnSeS. Further, it shows the detailed steps for the growth of bulk crystals enabling optical devices which can operate in the visible spectrum for applications such as blue light emitting diodes, lasers for optical displays and in the mid-IR wavelength range, high density recording, and military communications. The book then discusses the advantages of crystallization from vapor compared to the conventional melt growth: lower processing temperatures, the purification process associated with PVT, and the improved surface morphology of the grown crystals, as well as the necessary drawbacks to the PVT process, such as the low and inconsistent growth rates and the low yield of single crystals. By presenting in-situ measurements of transport rate, partial pressures and interferometry, as well as visual observations, the book provides detailed insights into in the kinetics during the PVT process. This book is intended for graduate students and professionals in materials science as well as engineers preparing and developing optical devices with semiconductors.

This Thesis describes the first measurement of, and constraints on, Higgs boson production in the vector boson fusion mode, where the Higgs decays to b quarks (the most common decay channel), at the LHC. The vector boson fusion mode, in which the Higgs is produced simultaneously with a pair of quark jets, provides an unparalleled opportunity to study the detailed properties of the Higgs, including the possibility of parity and CP violation, as well as its couplings and mass. It thus opens up this new field of study for precision investigation as the LHC increases in energy and intensity, leading the way to this new and exciting arena of precision Higgs research.

These proceedings gather invited and contributed talks presented at the XXII DAE-BRNS High Energy Physics (HEP) Symposium, which was held at the University of Delhi, India, on 12-16 December 2016. The contributions cover a variety of topics in particle physics, astroparticle physics, cosmology and related areas from both experimental and theoretical perspectives, namely (1) Neutrino Physics, (2) Standard Model Physics (including Electroweak, Flavour Physics), (3) Beyond Standard Model Physics, (4) Heavy Ion Physics & QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics), (5) Particle Astrophysics & Cosmology, (6) Future Experiments and Detector Development, (7) Formal Theory, and (8) Societal Applications: Medical Physics, Imaging, etc. The DAE-BRNS High Energy Physics Symposium, widely considered to be one of the leading symposiums in the field of Elementary Particle Physics, is held every other year in India and supported by the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (BRNS), Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), India. As many as 400 physicists and researchers attended the 22nd Symposium to discuss the latest advances in the field. A poster session was also organized to highlight the work and findings of young researchers. Bringing together the essential content, the book offers a valuable resource for both beginning and advanced researchers in the field.

This thesis covers several important topics relevant to our understanding of quark-gluon plasma. It describes measurement of the third-order harmonic flow using two-particle correlations and isolation of flow and non-flow contributions to particle correlations in gold-gold collisions. The work also investigates long-range longitudinal correlations in small systems of deuteron-gold collisions. The former is related to the hydrodynamic transport properties of the quark-gluon plasma created in gold-gold collisions. The latter pertains to the question whether hydrodynamics is applicable to small systems, such as deuteron-gold collisions, and whether the quark-gluon plasma can be formed in those small-system collisions. The work presented in this thesis was conducted with the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where the center-of-mass energy of both collision systems was a factor of 100 larger than the rest mass of the colliding nuclei. The results contained in this thesis are highly relevant to our quest for deeper understanding of quantum chromodynamics. The results obtained challenge the interpretation of previous works from several other experiments on small systems, and provoke a fresh look at the physics of hydrodynamics and particle correlations pertinent to high energy nuclear collisions.

Problems with the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics date back to attempts by Max Born, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, as well as many others in the 1920s to continue to employ the classical concept of a particle in the context of the quantum world. The experimental observations at the time and the assumption that the classical concept of a particle was to be preserved have led to an enormous literature on the foundations of quantum mechanics and a great deal of confusion then and now among non-physicists and students in any field that involves quantum theory. It is the historical approach to the teaching of quantum mechanics that is at the root of the problem.Spacetime is the arena within which quantum mechanical phenomena take place. For this reason, several Appendices are devoted to the nature of spacetime as well as to topics that can help us understand it such as vacuum fluctuations, the Unruh effect and Hawking radiation.Because of the success of quantum mechanical calculations, those who wish to understand the foundations of the theory are often given the apocryphal advice, 'just ignore the issue and calculate'. It is hoped that this book will help dispel some of the dismay, frustration, and confusion among those who refuse to take to heart this admonition.

This research monograph covers extensively the theory of the muon anomalous magnetic moment and provides estimates of the theoretical uncertainties. The muon anomalous magnetic moment is one of the most precisely measured quantities in elementary particle physics and provides one of the most stringent tests of relativistic quantum field theory as a fundamental theoretical framework. It allows for an extremely precise check of the standard model of elementary particles and of its limitations. This book reviews the present state of knowledge of the anomalous magnetic moment a=(g-2)/2 of the muon. Recent experiments at the Brookhaven National Laboratory now reach the unbelievable precision of 0.5 parts per million, improving the accuracy of previous g-2 experiments at CERN by a factor of 14. In addition, quantum electrodynamics and electroweak and hadronic effects are reviewed. Since non-perturbative hadronic effects play a key role for the precision test, their evaluation is described in detail. Perspectives for future improvements of the theoretical and experimental precision are considered. The new edition features improved theoretical predictions to match upcoming experiments, like the one at Fermilab. Additionally the new more precise basic parameters are presented.

This textbook summarizes the basic knowledge of atomic, nuclear, and radiation physics that professionals working in medical physics and biomedical engineering need for efficient and safe use of ionizing radiation in medicine. Concentrating on the underlying principles of radiation physics, the textbook covers the prerequisite knowledge for medical physics courses on the graduate and post-graduate levels in radiotherapy physics, radiation dosimetry, imaging physics, and health physics, thus providing the link between elementary undergraduate physics and the intricacies of four medical physics specialties: diagnostic radiology physics, nuclear medicine physics, radiation oncology physics, and health physics. To recognize the importance of radiation dosimetry to medical physics three new chapters have been added to the 14 chapters of the previous edition. Chapter 15 provides a general introduction to radiation dosimetry. Chapter 16 deals with absolute radiation dosimetry systems that establish absorbed dose or some other dose related quantity directly from the signal measured by the dosimeter. Three absolute dosimetry techniques are known and described in detail: (i) calorimetric; (ii) chemical (Fricke), and (iii) ionometric. Chapter 17 deals with relative radiation dosimetry systems that rely on a previous dosimeter calibration in a known radiation field. Many relative radiation dosimetry systems have been developed to date and four most important categories used routinely in medicine and radiation protection are described in this chapter: (i) Ionometric dosimetry; (ii) Luminescence dosimetry; (iii) Semiconductor dosimetry; and (iv) Film dosimetry. The book is intended as a textbook for a radiation physics course in academic medical physics graduate programs as well as a reference book for candidates preparing for certification examinations in medical physics sub-specialties. It may also be of interest to many professionals, not only physicists, who in their daily occupations deal with various aspects of medical physics or radiation physics and have a need or desire to improve their understanding of radiation physics.

State-of-the-art survey by leading experts in the field. Major foci are superheavy nuclei and neutron-rich exotic nuclei. In addition new developments in nuclear fission and nuclear cluster decay are shown. Finally developments in relativistic heavy ion collisions and the physics of supercritical fields are detailed.

This volume constitutes the state-of-the-art in active interrogation, widely recognized as indispensable methods for addressing current and future nuclear security needs. Written by a leading group of science and technology experts, this comprehensive reference presents technologies and systems in the context of the fundamental physics challenges and practical requirements. It compares the features, limitations, technologies, and impact of passive and active measurement techniques; describes radiation sources for active interrogation including electron and ion accelerators, intense lasers, and radioisotope-based sources; and it describes radiation detectors used for active interrogation. Entire chapters are devoted to data acquisition and processing systems, modeling and simulation, data interpretation and algorithms, and a survey of working active measurement systems. Active Interrogation in Nuclear Security is structured to appeal to a range of audiences, including graduate students, active researchers in the field, and policy analysts. The first book devoted entirely to active interrogation Presents a focused review of the relevant physics Surveys available technology Analyzes scientific and technology trends Provides historical and policy context Igor Jovanovic is a Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan and has previously also taught at Penn State University and Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley and worked as physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Jovanovic has made numerous contributions to the science and technology of radiation detection, as well as the radiation sources for use in active interrogation in nuclear security. He has taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses in areas that include radiation detection, nuclear physics, and nuclear security. At University of Michigan Dr. Jovanovic is the director of Neutron Science Laboratory and is also associated with the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. Anna Erickson is an Assistant Professor in the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering Program of the G.W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Advanced Detectors Group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Erickson received her PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a focus on radiation detection for active interrogation applications. Her research interests focus on nuclear non-proliferation including antineutrino analysis and non-traditional detector design and characterization. She teaches courses in advanced experimental detection for reactor and nuclear nonproliferation applications, radiation dosimetry and fast reactor analysis.

This book discusses a novel and high-rate-capable micro pattern gaseous detector of the Micromegas (MICRO-MEsh GAS detector) type. It provides a detailed characterization of the performance of Micromegas detectors on the basis of measurements and simulations, along with an in-depth examination of analysis and reconstruction methods. The accurate and efficient detection of minimum ionizing particles in high-rate background environments is demonstrated. The excellent performance determined here for these lightweight detectors will make possible the live medical imaging of a patient during ion-beam treatment.

Quantum Field Theory has become the universal language of most modern theoretical physics. This introductory textbook shows how this beautiful theory offers the correct mathematical framework to describe and understand the fundamental interactions of elementary particles. The book begins with a brief reminder of basic classical field theories, electrodynamics and general relativity, as well as their symmetry properties, and proceeds with the principles of quantisation following Feynman's path integral approach. Special care is used at every step to illustrate the correct mathematical formulation of the underlying assumptions. Gauge theories and the problems encountered in their quantisation are discussed in detail. The last chapters contain a full description of the Standard Model of particle physics and the attempts to go beyond it, such as grand unified theories and supersymmetry. Written for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in physics and mathematics, the book could also serve as a reference for active researchers in the field.

The energy momentum tensor (EMT) is one of the most fundamental observables in physics. Recently, a novel method to define EMT on the basis of the gradient-flow formalism has been proposed. It turned out that the EMT operator can be constructed even on the lattice with the method, which enables non-perturbative computations. This approach has been successfully applied to the analyses on thermodynamic quantities. This book presents the study on spatial EMT distributions around static charges via the gradient flow in lattice simulations based on SU(3) Yang-Mills theory. Static charges are employed as probes to explore complex quantum systems, and EMT then characterizes the response of vacuum as well as hot medium under the existence of the charges, which significantly provides profound and novel insights into the non-perturbative phenomena, such as the confinement of quarks. In addition, the book treats the study on the EMT distribution around a magnetic vortex in the Abelian-Higgs model, which is compared with the lattice result. These achievements open up various future studies for revealing non-trivial aspects of the strong interaction. The book also includes well-organized reviews on general properties of EMT, lattice gauge theory and the gradient-flow formalism with its application to the definition of EMT. They are useful for students and young researchers as a brief introduction to this field.

This thesis describes the stand-alone discovery and measurement of the Higgs boson in its decays to two W bosons using the Run-I ATLAS dataset. This is the most precise measurement of gluon-fusion Higgs boson production and is among the most significant results attained at the LHC. The thesis provides an exceptionally clear exposition on a complicated analysis performed by a large team of researchers. Aspects of the analysis performed by the author are explained in detail; these include new methods for evaluating uncertainties on the jet binning used in the analysis and for estimating the background due to associated production of a W boson and an off-shell photon. The thesis also describes a measurement of the WW cross section, an essential background to Higgs boson production. The primary motivation of the LHC was to prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs boson. In 2012, CERN announced this discovery and the resultant ATLAS publication contained three decay channels: gg, ZZ, and WW.

In the field of particle and astrophysics, one of the major unresolved problems is to understand the nature and properties of dark matter, which constitutes almost 80% of the matter content of the universe. This book gives a pedagogical introduction to the field of dark matter in general, and in particular to the model building perspective. Starting from the evidence and need for dark matter, it goes into the deeper understanding of how to accommodate a dark matter candidate in a particle physics model. This book focuses on teaching the basic tools for model building of dark matter, starting from the easiest to gradually the difficult one. Although there are plenty of dark matter models available in the literature, this book concentrates on the important ones. This book aims to motivate the reader to propose a new dark matter model complying with all observational constraints.

This solutions booklet is a supplement to the text book 'Group Theory in Physics' by Wu-Ki Tung. It will be useful to lecturers and students taking the subject as detailed solutions are given.

First Snow White encounters one of the Little People, then one of the Even Smaller People, and finally one of the Truly Infinitesimal People. And no matter how diligently she searches, the only dwarves she can find are collapsed stars! Clearly, she's not at home in her well-known Brothers Grimm fairy tale, but instead in a strange new landscape that features quantum behavior, the wavelike properties of particles, and the Uncertainty Principle. She (and we) must have entered, in short, one of the worlds created by Robert Gilmore, physicist and fabulist.

This thesis presents theoretical and numerical studies on phenomenological description of the quark gluon plasma (QGP), a many-body system of elementary particles.

The author formulates a causal theory of hydrodynamics for systems with net charges from the law of increasing entropy and a momentum expansion method. The derived equation results can be applied not only to collider physics, but also to the early universe and ultra-cold atoms.

The author also develops novel off-equilibrium hydrodynamic models for the longitudinal expansion of the QGP on the basis of these equations. Numerical estimations show that convection and entropy production during the hydrodynamic evolution are key to explaining excessive charged particle production, recently observed at the Large Hadron Collider. Furthermore, the analyses at finite baryon density indicate that the energy available for QGP production is larger than the amount conventionally assumed. "

This book, like the first and second editions, addresses the fundamental principles of interaction between radiation and matter and the principles of particle detection and detectors in a wide scope of fields, from low to high energy, including space physics and medical environment. It provides abundant information about the processes of electromagnetic and hadronic energy deposition in matter, detecting systems, performance of detectors and their optimization.The third edition includes additional material covering, for instance: mechanisms of energy loss like the inverse Compton scattering, corrections due to the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect, an extended relativistic treatment of nucleus-nucleus screened Coulomb scattering, and transport of charged particles inside the heliosphere. Furthermore, the displacement damage (NIEL) in semiconductors has been revisited to account for recent experimental data and more comprehensive comparisons with results previously obtained.This book will be of great use to graduate students and final-year undergraduates as a reference and supplement for courses in particle, astroparticle, space physics and instrumentation. A part of the book is directed toward courses in medical physics. The book can also be used by researchers in experimental particle physics at low, medium, and high energy who are dealing with instrumentation.

This revised edition of the author's classic 2006 text offers a comprehensively updated review of the field of relativistic nonlinear electrodynamics. It explores the interaction of strong and super-strong electromagnetic/laser radiation with the electromagnetic quantum vacuum and diverse types of matter - including free charged particles and antiparticles, acceleration beams, plasma and plasmous media. The appearance of laser sources of relativistic and ultra-relativistic intensities over the last decade has stimulated investigation of a large class of processes under such super-strong radiation fields. Revisions for this second edition reflect these developments and the book includes new chapters on Bremsstrahlung and nonlinear absorption of superintense radiation in plasmas, the nonlinear interaction of relativistic atoms with intense laser radiation, nonlinear interaction of strong laser radiation with Graphene, and relativistic nonlinear phenomena in solid-plasma targets under supershort laser pulses of ultrarelativistic intensities. The only book devoted to the subject of relativistic nonlinear electrodynamics, this second edition will be a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers involved in any aspect of the field, including those working with intense x-ray - gamma-ray lasers, the new generation of small size laser-plasma accelerators of superhigh energies and high-brightness particle beams.