This volume comprises select peer-reviewed papers from the Indo-French Workshop on Multifragmentation, Collective Flow, and Sub-Threshold Particle Production in Heavy-Ion Reactions held at the Department of Physics, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India in February, 2019. The contents highlight latest research trends in intermediate energy nuclear physics and emphasize on the various reaction mechanisms which take place in heavy-ion collisions. The chapters contribute to the understanding of interactions that govern the dynamics at sub-nucleonic level. The book includes contributions from global experts hailing from major research facilities of nuclear physics, and provides a good balance between experimental and theoretical model based studies. Given the range of topics covered, this book can be a useful reference for students and researchers interested in the field of heavy-ion reactions.

Dirac operators play an important role in several domains of mathematics and physics, for example: index theory, elliptic pseudodifferential operators, electromagnetism, particle physics, and the representation theory of Lie groups. In this essentially self-contained work, the basic ideas underlying the concept of Dirac operators are explored. Starting with Clifford algebras and the fundamentals of differential geometry, the text focuses on two main properties, namely, conformal invariance, which determines the local behavior of the operator, and the unique continuation property dominating its global behavior. Spin groups and spinor bundles are covered, as well as the relations with their classical counterparts, orthogonal groups and Clifford bundles. The chapters on Clifford algebras and the fundamentals of differential geometry can be used as an introduction to the above topics, and are suitable for senior undergraduate and graduate students. The other chapters are also accessible at this level so that this text requires very little previous knowledge of the domains covered. The reader will benefit, however, from some knowledge of complex analysis, which gives the simplest example of a Dirac operator. More advanced readers---mathematical physicists, physicists and mathematicians from diverse areas---will appreciate the fresh approach to the theory as well as the new results on boundary value theory.

This volume gathers selected contributions from the participants of the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) workshop Coupled Mathematical Models for Physical and Biological Nanoscale Systems and their Applications, who explore various aspects of the analysis, modeling and applications of nanoscale systems, with a particular focus on low dimensional nanostructures and coupled mathematical models for their description. Due to the vastness, novelty and complexity of the interfaces between mathematical modeling and nanoscience and nanotechnology, many important areas in these disciplines remain largely unexplored. In their efforts to move forward, multidisciplinary research communities have come to a clear understanding that, along with experimental techniques, mathematical modeling and analysis have become crucial to the study, development and application of systems at the nanoscale. The conference, held at BIRS in autumn 2016, brought together experts from three different communities working in fields where coupled mathematical models for nanoscale and biosystems are especially relevant: mathematicians, physicists (both theorists and experimentalists), and computational scientists, including those dealing with biological nanostructures. Its objectives: summarize the state-of-the-art; identify and prioritize critical problems of major importance that require solutions; analyze existing methodologies; and explore promising approaches to addressing the challenges identified. The contributions offer up-to-date introductions to a range of topics in nano and biosystems, identify important challenges, assess current methodologies and explore promising approaches. As such, this book will benefit researchers in applied mathematics, as well as physicists and biologists interested in coupled mathematical models and their analysis for physical and biological nanoscale systems that concern applications in biotechnology and medicine, quantum information processing and optoelectronics.

This book focuses on unstable systems both from the classical and the quantum mechanical points of view and studies the relations between them. The first part deals with quantum systems. Here the main generally used methods today, such as the Gamow approach, and the Wigner-Weisskopf method, are critically discussed. The quantum mechanical Lax-Phillips theory developed by the authors, based on the dilation theory of Nagy and Foias and its more general extension to approximate semigroup evolution is explained. The second part provides a description of approaches to classical stability analysis and introduces geometrical methods recently developed by the authors, which are shown to be highly effective in diagnosing instability and, in many cases, chaotic behavior. It is then shown that, in the framework of the theory of symplectic manifolds, there is a systematic algorithm for the construction of a canonical transformation of any standard potential model Hamiltonian to geometric form, making accessible powerful geometric methods for stability analysis in a wide range of applications.

This book presents the optimal auxiliary functions method and applies it to various engineering problems and in particular in boundary layer problems. The cornerstone of the presented procedure is the concept of "optimal auxiliary functions" which are needed to obtain accurate results in an efficient way. Unlike other known analytic approaches, this procedure provides us with a simple but rigorous way to control and adjust the convergence of the solutions of nonlinear dynamical systems. The optimal auxiliary functions are depending on some convergence-control parameters whose optimal values are rigorously determined from mathematical point of view. The capital strength of our procedure is its fast convergence, since after only one iteration, we obtain very accurate analytical solutions which are very easy to be verified. Moreover, no simplifying hypothesis or assumptions are made. The book contains a large amount of practical models from various fields of engineering such as classical and fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, nonlinear oscillations, electrical machines, and many more. The book is a continuation of our previous books "Nonlinear Dynamical Systems in Engineering. Some Approximate Approaches", Springer-2011 and "The Optimal Homotopy Asymptotic Method. Engineering Applications", Springer-2015.

'Written by two professors emeriti with a long and distinguished career both in research and teaching, the book clearly shows the wide experience of its authors ... This is a good book, carefully prepared, full of details and appropriate for its scope. Those who will profit the most from it are the students who are obliged (or prefer) to study independently. They will appreciate the clarity of exposition and will find the numerous problems both stimulating and rewarding. What sets the book apart are undoubtedly the detailed solutions to all of the problems.'Contemporary PhysicsThis is an introductory book on solid state physics. It is a translation of a Hebrew version, written for the Open University in Israel. Aimed mainly for self-study, the book contains appendices with the necessary background, explains each calculation in detail and contains many solved problems. The bulk of the book discusses the basic concepts of periodic crystals, including lattice structures, radiation scattering off crystals, crystal bonding, vibrations of crystals, and electronic properties. On the other hand, the book also presents brief reviews of advanced topics, e.g. quasicrystals, soft condensed matter, mesoscopic physics and the quantum Hall effect. There are also many specific examples drawn from modern research topics, e.g. perovskite oxides relevant for high temperature superconductivity, graphene, electrons in low dimensions and more.

This book aims to introduce the reader to basic concepts concerning matter physics, describing how fundamental properties of atoms, molecules and condensed matter are affected by properties of electrons and by their interaction with electromagnetic waves.As an introductory text on basic properties of matter, the contents are designed for undergraduate students in electrical engineering. It is based on the lectures given by the author for over a decade on Matter Physics and Solid State Physics. It focuses on electronic properties to discuss the structure, electrical and optical properties of matter, and is organized into six chapters.The first chapter is a short review of the basic properties of electromagnetic waves, giving the basic concepts related to wave propagation to be handled easily to understand the subsequent topics. The next chapter on quantum mechanics helps to understand the quantum properties of matter using the simplest formalizations. Chapter 3 introduces the core of the book by using quantum mechanics to describe the electronic properties of the atom. Then, after atomic bonding, molecules and condensed matter are discussed before approaching the structural properties of crystal and soft matter. The following chapters (4 and 5) are then devoted to electrical properties and optical properties and address the main topics related to solid state and semiconductor physics as well as light-matter interaction. The final chapter 6, deals with the basic properties of lasers, due to the relevance of light sources in everyday life, and their widespread use in all branches of engineering.

'Political intrigue, the arms race, early developments of nuclear science, espionage and more are all present in this gripping book ... The book is crisply written and well worth the read. The text includes a number of translated segments of official documents plus extracts from memoirs of some of the people involved. So, although Pondrom sprinkles his opinions throughout, there is sufficient material to permit readers to make their own judgements. 'CERN The book describes the lives of the people who gave Stalin his weapon - scientists, engineers, managers, and prisoners during the early post war years from 1945-1953. Many anecdotes and vicissitudes of life at that time in the Soviet Union accompany considerable technical information regarding the solutions to formidable problems of nuclear weapons development. The contents should interest the reader who wants to learn more about this part of the history and politics in 20th century physics. The prevention of nuclear proliferation is a topic of current interest, and the procedure followed by the Soviet Union as described in this book will help to understand the complexities involved.

This multi-volume handbook is the most up-to-date and comprehensive reference work in the field of fractional calculus and its numerous applications. This fourth volume collects authoritative chapters covering several applications of fractional calculus in physics, including classical and continuum mechanics.

IMA Volumes 135: Transport in Transition Regimes and 136: Dispersive Transport Equations and Multiscale Models focus on the modeling of processes for which transport is one of the most complicated components. This includes processes that involve a wide range of length scales over different spatio-temporal regions of the problem, ranging from the order of mean-free paths to many times this scale. Consequently, effective modeling techniques require different transport models in each region. The first issue is that of finding efficient simulations techniques, since a fully resolved kinetic simulation is often impractical. One therefore develops homogenization, stochastic, or moment based subgrid models. Another issue is to quantify the discrepancy between macroscopic models and the underlying kinetic description, especially when dispersive effects become macroscopic, for example due to quantum effects in semiconductors and superfluids. These two volumes address these questions in relation to a wide variety of application areas, such as semiconductors, plasmas, fluids, chemically reactive gases, etc.

This book offers a practical reference guide to soft rock mechanics for engineers and scientists. Written by recognized experts, it will benefit professionals, contractors, academics, researchers and students working on rock engineering projects in the fields of civil engineering, mining and construction engineering. Soft Rock Mechanics and Engineering covers a specific subject of great relevance in Rock Mechanics - and one that is directly connected to the design of geotechnical structures under difficult ground conditions. The book addresses practical issues related to the geomechanical properties of these types of rock masses and their characterization, while also discussing advances regarding in situ investigation, safety, and monitoring of geotechnical structures in soft rocks. Lastly, it presents important case histories involving tunnelling, dam foundations, coal and open pit mines and landslides.

This book explores emerging topics in atomic- and nano-scale electronics after the era of Moore's Law, covering both the physical principles behind, and technological implementations for many devices that are now expected to become key elements of the future of nanoelectronics beyond traditional complementary metal-oxide semiconductors (CMOS). Moore's law is not a physical law itself, but rather a visionary prediction that has worked well for more than 50 years but is rapidly coming to its end as the gate length of CMOS transistors approaches the length-scale of only a few atoms. Thus, the key question here is: "What is the future for nanoelectronics beyond CMOS?" The possible answers are found in this book. Introducing novel quantum devices such as atomic-scale electronic devices, ballistic devices, memristors, superconducting devices, this book also presents the reader with the physical principles underlying new ways of computing, as well as their practical implementation. Topics such as quantum computing, neuromorphic computing are highlighted here as some of the most promising candidates for ushering in a new era of atomic-scale electronics beyond CMOS.

This book seeks to construct a consistent fundamental quantum theory of gravity, which is often considered one of the most challenging open problems in present-day physics. It approaches this challenge using modern functional renormalization group techniques, and attempts to realize the idea of "Asymptotic Safety" originally proposed by S. Weinberg. Quite remarkably, the book makes significant progress regarding both the fundamental aspects of the program and its phenomenological consequences. The conceptual developments pioneer the construction of a well-behaved functional renormalization group equation adapted to spacetimes with a preferred time-direction. It is demonstrated that the Asymptotic Safety mechanism persists in this setting and extends to many phenomenologically interesting gravity-matter systems. These achievements constitute groundbreaking steps towards bridging the gap between quantum gravity in Euclidean and Lorentzian spacetimes.The phenomenological applications cover core topics in quantum gravity, e.g. constructing a phenomenologically viable cosmological evolution based on quantum gravity effects in the very early universe, and analyzing quantum corrections to black holes forming from a spherical collapse.As a key feature, all developments are presented in a comprehensive and accessible way. This makes the work a timely and valuable guide into the rapidly evolving field of Asymptotic Safety.

Waste to Energy deals with the very topical subject of converting the calorific content of waste material into useful forms of energy. It complements and, to a certain degree, overlaps with its companion volume, "Biomass to Biofuels", since a significant proportion of biomass converted to energy nowadays originates from various types of waste. The material in the first, more substantial part of the volume has been arranged according to the type of process for energy conversion. Biochemical processes are described in six articles. These relate to the production of methane by anaerobic digestion; reactor conversion efficiencies; investigations on ethanol production from biodegradable municipal solid waste through hydrolysis and fermentation; hydrogen production from glucose through a hybrid anaerobic and photosynthetic process; biodiesel production from used cooking oil through base-catalyzed transesterification. Conversions by thermochemical processes are discussed in the subsequent eleven articles of the volume.These cover combustion, the direct use of heat energy; using the heat produced in thermal power stations for steam and, ultimately, electricity generation; municipal solid waste and refuse-derived fuel. In another article, computational fluid dynamics modelling is applied to assess the influence of process parameters and to perform optimization studies. A group of articles deal with more complex thermochemical processes involving combustion combined with pyrolysis and gasification. Two articles focus on biofuels as feed for fuel cells. In the last six articles, the emphasis is on management and policy rather than technical issues.

Hadron colliders probe physics at new energy frontiers and search for new particles and forces. In addition, hadron colliders now provide also an environment for precision physics. The present volume collects the results from recently completed runs at major colliders as well as new ideas about collider physics and techniques. It will serve as the main source of reference in the field for many years to come.

This thesis describes the structures of six-dimensional (6d) superconformal field theories and its torus compactifications. The first half summarizes various aspects of 6d field theories, while the latter half investigates torus compactifications of these theories, and relates them to four-dimensional superconformal field theories in the class, called class S. It is known that compactifications of 6d conformal field theories with maximal supersymmetries provide numerous insights into four-dimensional superconformal field theories. This thesis generalizes the story to the theories with smaller supersymmetry, constructing those six-dimensional theories as brane configurations in the M-theory, and highlighting the importance of fractionalization of M5-branes. This result establishes new dualities between the theories with eight supercharges.

This book covers emerging energy storage technologies and material characterization methods along with various systems and applications in building, power generation systems and thermal management. The authors present options available for reducing the net energy consumption for heating/cooling, improving the thermal properties of the phase change materials and optimization methods for heat storage embedded multi-generation systems. An in-depth discussion on the natural convection-driven phase change is included. The book also discusses main energy storage options for thermal management practices in photovoltaics and phase change material applications that aim passive thermal control. This book will appeal to researchers and professionals in the fields of mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, renewable energy, and thermodynamics. It can also be used as an ancillary text in upper-level undergraduate courses and graduate courses in these fields.

How can one determine the physical properties of the medium or the geometrical properties of the domain by observing electromagnetic waves? To answer this fundamental problem in mathematics and physics, this book leads the reader to the frontier of inverse scattering theory for electromagnetism.The first three chapters, written comprehensively, can be used as a textbook for undergraduate students. Beginning with elementary vector calculus, this book provides fundamental results for wave equations and Helmholtz equations, and summarizes the potential theory. It also explains the cohomology theory in an easy and straightforward way, which is an essential part of electromagnetism related to geometry. It then describes the scattering theory for the Maxwell equation by the time-dependent method and also by the stationary method in a concise, but almost self-contained manner. Based on these preliminary results, the book proceeds to the inverse problem for the Maxwell equation.The chapters for the potential theory and elementary cohomology theory are good introduction to graduate students. The results in the last chapter on the inverse scattering for the medium and the determination of Betti numbers are new, and will give a current scope for the inverse spectral problem on non-compact manifolds. It will be useful for young researchers who are interested in this field and trying to find new problems.

This volume explores how ionic liquids are used in different areas of biotechnology. It also provides insights on the interaction of ionic liquids with biomolecules and biomaterials. Ionic liquids have become essential players in the fields of synthesis, catalysis, extraction and electrochemistry, and their unique properties have opened a wide range of applications in biotechnology. Readers will discover diverse examples of the application of ionic liquids as solvents for biomaterials extraction and pretreatment, in enzymatic and whole cell catalysed reaction, and as activation agents for biocatalysis. Particular attention is given to the biologically functionalized ionic liquids employed in medical and pharmaceutical applications. Although ionic liquids are considered "green solvents", the contributing authors will also explore their environmental impact when applied to biotechnology. Chemical, biological and medical scientists interested in ionic liquids and biotechnology will find this work instructive and informative.

This book collects recent advances in the field of nonlinear dynamics in biological systems. Focusing on medical applications as well as more fundamental questions in biochemistry, it presents recent findings in areas such as control in chemically driven reaction-diffusion systems, electrical wave propagation through heart tissue, neural network growth, chiral symmetry breaking in polymers and mechanochemical pattern formation in the cytoplasm, particularly in the context of cardiac cells. It is a compilation of works, including contributions from international scientists who attended the "2nd BCAM Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics in Biological Systems," held at the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics, Bilbao in September 2016. Embracing diverse disciplines and using multidisciplinary approaches - including theoretical concepts, simulations and experiments - these contributions highlight the nonlinear nature of biological systems in order to be able to reproduce their complex behavior. Edited by the conference organizers and featuring results that represent recent findings and not necessarily those presented at the conference, the book appeals to applied mathematicians, biophysicists and computational biologists.