Book Description

This book surveys the physics of small clusters of particles undergoing oscillations and vibrations.These oscillations occur in nuclear physics and the physics and chemistry of atomic clusters.First, the authors survey experimental information on collective vibrations in atoms, metal clusters and nuclei, then they develop theoretical tools to understand these findings. Finally, they discuss important vibrational modes observed in the different systems and mechanisms for the damping of vibrational modes and the effects of excitation energy on the modes. ... Read more

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Review OF Parisi's Statistical Field Theory
This book presents a fairly complete description of field theoretic methods to varied fields of physics. The presentation is quite clear and complete. I recommend these books to any one interested in field theory in statistical mechanics or in quantum field theory. ... Read more

Book Description

Earthquakes, a plucked string, ocean waves crashing on the beach, the sound waves that allow us to recognize known voices. Waves are everywhere, and the propagation and classical properties of these apparently disparate phenomena can be described by the same mathematical methods: variational calculus, characteristics theory, and caustics. Taking a medium-by-medium approach, Julian Davis explains the mathematics needed to understand wave propagation in inviscid and viscous fluids, elastic solids, viscoelastic solids, and thermoelastic media, including hyperbolic partial differential equations and characteristics theory, which makes possible geometric solutions to nonlinear wave problems. The result is a clear and unified treatment of wave propagation that makes a diverse body of mathematics accessible to engineers, physicists, and applied mathematicians engaged in research on elasticity, aerodynamics, and fluid mechanics.

This book will particularly appeal to those working across specializations and those who seek the truly interdisciplinary understanding necessary to fully grasp waves and their behavior. By proceeding from concrete phenomena (e.g., the Doppler effect, the motion of sinusoidal waves, energy dissipation in viscous fluids, thermal stress) rather than abstract mathematical principles, Davis also creates a one-stop reference that will be prized by students of continuum mechanics and by mathematicians needing information on the physics of waves. ... Read more

Book Description

Quantum field theory is a powerful language for the description of the subatomic constituents of the physical world and the laws and principles that govern them. This book contains up-to-date in-depth analyses, by a group of eminent physicists and philosophers of science, of our present understanding of its conceptual foundations, of the reasons why this understanding has to be revised so that the theory can go further, and of possible directions in which revisions may be promising and productive. These analyses will be of interest to graduate students and research workers in physics who want to know about the foundational problems of their subject. The book will also be of interest to professional philosophers, historians and sociologists of science, because it contains much material for metaphysical and methodological reflections, for historical and cultural analyses, and for sociological analyses of the way in which various factors contribute to the way the foundations are revised. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Despair of Getting a Straight Answer
The organizer of this conference Tian Y. Cao, cannot be blamed for the truculence and peevishness of his confrerees. Make no mistake: there are some very good review articles here, but it seems whenever anyone (usuallyone of the philosophers in attendance) gets close to upsetting someparticular theoretical applecarts - mostly the ad hoc parts of currentlysuccessful theories like renormalization 'group' and effective field theoryin general - some member of the congregation gets miffed and wants to shutthe discussion down. Almost like the way the cultural critics portray it!For example Fisher very boorishly cutting off Rovelli, over what?. thedefinition of 'ontic'?. Gee, maybe you shouldn't have signed up to be alecturer if you don't know the terms. By the way, not only does the RG nothave an inverse, since it seems to be sensitive to people making 'apt'renormalization transforms - maybe it isn't even CLOSED. There are someconceptual difficulties, but they were not addressed by the theorists:Since there are spacelike correlations between 'geminal' wavefunctions inquantum mechanics, to what extent is the cluster decomposition theorem, sobeloved by field theorists like Weinberg and Wightman, inadmissible in anyQUANTUM field theory?, what is the connection between a linear metric space(x+ict, in which the momentum and total energy subsist), and an affinevector space (y and z in which the e-m field subsists), and shouldn't therebe transform between them?, and doesn't this have something to do with thefact that there is no natural units for length, especially volume, if oneuses only 'h', 'c', 'e', and the square of the vector potential, but onlyif one includes 'G' - the gravitational constant? That is, QuantumElectrodynamics always uses nonrelativistically invariant 'box'normalizations for the e-m field.The philosophically inclinedreader may like to check out H. Bacry's "Localizability and Space inQuantum Physics", for a second opinion on some of these issues. ... Read more

Book Description

Ticciati's approach to quantum field theory falls between building a mathematical model of the subject and presenting the mathematics that physicists actually use. It begins with the need to combine special relativity and quantum mechanics and culminates in a basic understanding of the standard model of electroweak and strong interactions. The book is divided into five parts: canonical quantization of scalar fields, Weyl, Dirac and vector fields, functional integral quantization, the standard model of the electroweak and strong interactions, renormalization. This should be a useful reference for those interested in quantum theory and related areas of function theory, functional analysis, differential geometry or topological invariant theory. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A Great Field Theory Book
Yes this book isn't perfect, but what book on physics is? That aside, there is no question this is an excellent field theory book with a rigorous approach. Physicists could learn from this style to produce better textbooks rather than following their usual mysterious approach to writing. This book is clearly laid out not only in mathematical style but also with clear and concise explanations of many physical concepts. It is in my opinion far better than Weinberg's book, written in a more readable style. It is also better than books like Peskin and Schroeder and Kaku which seem sloppily put together. Put the book together with Ryder and you will have the tools needed to get a good understanding of field theory. The title might be unfortunate, because it might keep physics professors from considering using it in their classes instead of the usual lousy standby's, which is too bad for the students.

fills a niche
This book is far from perfect, but I think it begins to fill an important niche in the world of QFT books: it presents most aspects of the theory, from basic principles to Feynman rules, gauge fields and renormalization, in a form that is unusually accessible to mathematicians. I'm coming at this from the perspective of a mathematician who has tried and failed to learn QFT from a variety of other books, and I wish I had discovered this one before even opening Weinberg or Peskin & Schroeder. Ticciati doesn't completely avoid the kind logical sleight of hand that is commonplace among physicists, but when doing manipulations whose mathematical basis is questionable, he's usually at least honest enough to point this out to the reader. I especially enjoyed the chapter on Lie algebra representation theory, which is closer to a mathematician's presentation of this subject than a physicist's, yet not without plenty of physical motivation. I'd criticize this book only for two things: (1) it's riddled with misprints (some obvious, some not) and (2) some topics are explained rather more concisely than they deserve, and not always in the most logical order; Ticciati has a tendency to use certain subtle concepts implicitly a few sections before he defines them precisely. One may hope that such errors will be corrected in a future edition. ... Read more

Book Description

Low-frequency wave modes of magnetized inhomogeneous plasmas have been subject to intense study in the last decade because they play important roles in the transport of energy in the plasmas. The "Alfvén wave heating" scheme has been investigated as a supplementary heating scheme for fusion plasma devices, and it has been invoked as a model of the heating of the solar and stellar coronae.
This book covers the latest research into the properties and applications of low-frequency wave modes in magnetized plasmas, the Alfvén waves and magneto-acoustic waves, in the context of laboratory, space and astrophysical plasmas. In particular, non-ideal effects on the dispersion relation and absorption properties of linear and non-linear waves are included, such as ion-cyclotron effects, friction between the ionized plasma and a background gas of neutral atoms, and the interaction of the plasma with dust particles.
The book also surveys the theory of Alfvén andmagnetoacoustic waves in inhomogeneous plasmas, as occur in realistic laboratory, space and astrophysical plasmas, with resulting localized wave modes such as surface waves. Waves are considered under a variety of plasma conditions, ranging from cold cosmic plasmas, to hot laboratory and solar plasmas, to the relativistic plasmas around pulsars.
... Read more

Book Description

The conformal group is the invariance group of geometry (which is not understood), the largest one. Physical applications are implied, as discussed, including reasons for interactions. The group structure as well as those of related groups are analyzed. An inhomogeneous group is a subgroup of a homogeneous one because of nonlinearities of the realization. Conservation of baryons (protons can’t decay) is explained and proven. Reasons for various realizations, so matrix elements, of the Lorentz group given. The clearly relevant mass level formula is compared with experimental values. Questions, implications and possibilities, including for differential equations, are raised. ... Read more

Book Description

This excellent undergraduate-level text emphasizes optics and acoustics, covering inductive derivation of the equation for transverse waves on a string, acoustic plane waves, boundary-value problems, polarization, three-dimensional waves and more. With numerous problems (solutions for about half). "The material is superbly chosen and brilliantly written" — Physics Today. Problems. Appendices.
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The Physics of Light and Waves
I found this book extremely well written and an excellent introduction to the physics of wave propogation. In my own work I am concerned with the way a light wave propogates through the optics of a telescope. I read the 1967 edition of this book and was pleasantly surprised by Towne's comprehensive and well explained coverage of this subject. This book would make an excellent undergraduate upper level course. ... Read more

Book Description

This unique one-volume overview of classical wave theory—ideal as a classroom text or for individual study—covers wave phenomena of acoustics, optics, electromagnetic radiations and more. Topics include fundamentals, Bessel functions, waveguides, elasticity theory, hydrodynamic waves, and special phenomenon of wave diffraction. With problems.
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Hit and Miss
Elmore and Heald is a very hit and miss book. The first chapter about simple transverse waves on strings is pretty good except for the confusing treatment of Fourier series (which I can't imagine would help anyone who hasn't seen them before). Chapter 3 on elastic theory was fine too and the EM waves stuff in chapter 8 wasn't bad.

However, the introduction to tensors in chapter 7 and their application to more complex elastic theory was horrible. The dyadic notation they use is really old-fashioned and their presentation is confusing. The stuff in chapter 12 on fourier transforms and integrals wasn't that great either.

More generally, the problem is that it spends too much time diving into excruciating detail without teaching and emphasizing important concepts. Not to mention the fact that there are no example problems. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Pre W- and Z-boson book
Although published in 1983, this book predates the discoveries made at CERN of the intermediate vector bosons. This discovery coupled with the discovery of weak neutral currents more than a decade before, solidified the role of gauge theories in providing a unified theory of elementary particle interactions. The author does a fine job of introducing the history of gauge theory, and also its conceptual foundations, emphasizing the physics, and not the mathematical formalism.

In the book, the Einstein theory of gravitation is explained, naturally, as the first successful gauge theory, the local coordinates of which can be defined as the gravitational field. This, the author explains, movtivated H. Weyl to generalize this to one of the other forces of nature, namely electromagnetism. Weyl needed a quantity that would transform like the electromagnetic potential under changes of position. For this he chose to assert that the norm of a physical vector should depend on position (i.e. a change of "scale"), and thus to compare lengths at different places in space-time one needs a connection. This connection did transform like a vector potential and thus gave Weyl what he needed. His theory was rejected however by Einstein and Bergmann, and many others. The soundest of their objections was based on an argument from quantum theory, namely that a natural scale involving the particle's wavelength is characteristic of the quantum theory, and the wavelength is dependent on mass, which cannot depend on position.

The author also overviews the role of gauge invariance in the Hamilton-Jacobi formulation of electromagnetic theory. The inclusion of this discussion is rare in books and articles written on gauge theory at the time of this one (or before), but it does serve to motivate nicely the place that gauge invariance holds in the quantum theory of electromagnetism. In this context, the Aharonov-Bohm effect is discussed, and asserted to be proven experimentally. This is a controversial assertion however, and the one can say without any mental reservations that after a thorough study of the literature on the experiments studying this effect, that they are inconclusive as of this date.

In addition, the author discusses the reasons that gauge invariance took so long to be accepted by the physical community. In the quantum realm, one of these reasons, he argues, is due to the fact that gauge transformations were related to the phase of the wavefunction, and not to coordinates in space-time. The latter geometric view was thus missing from the concept of gauge invariance in quantum physics. In addition, the gauge group did not seem to play a role in the dynamics of the quantum theory, it merely being a sort of ancillary property that had no predictive power.

Such beliefs ended of course with the rise of Yang-Mills theories, but the road to acceptance of Yang-Mills gauge theories was not a smooth one. It took many years before the non-renormalizability of these theories was worked out. In the meantime, mathematicians were becoming more attracted to the study of gauge theories, and the formulation of gauge theories from a mathematically rigorous point of view was gaining major advances, excluding the path integral quantization of these theories, which to this date, has defied a mathematically rigorous treatment. The author details well the development of gauge theories from the paper of Yang-Mills, up until the time of the book's publication. The Weinberg-Salam theory and its triumph in the prediction of neutral currents is oultined, and a brief introduction is given to quantum chromodynamics, the gauge theory of the strong interaction. The Weinberg-Salam theory was further solidified in the early eighties due to the experimental evidence for intermediate vector bosons.

That gauge theores are successful in predicting elementary particle phenomena has now become a cliche. There is still of course an enormous amount of work to be done, particularly from the standpoint of the calculation of quantities in low-energy strong-interaction physics, and the prediction of bound states using quantum gauge field theories. Superstring and M-theories have supplanted a lot of the research in gauge theories, this research also involving the mathematical community to a large degree. Indeed, Weyl, Einstein, Yang, and Mills would no doubt be astonished at the level of mathematics now being used in these theories. The mathematical constructions used in their theories was considered esoteric at the time, but it pales in comparison to the dizzying heights that mathematics has been taking in superstring and M-theories. These developments are very exciting and one can probably say with a fair degree of confidence that the role of gauge theory will remain in research in high energy physics in the 21st century. ... Read more

Book Description

The aim of this book is to present selected theoretical topics on ocean wave dynamics, including basic principles and applications in coastal and offshore engineering, all from the deterministic point of view. The bulk of the material deals with the linearized theory. ... Read more

Book Description

This book describes the remarkable connections that exist between the classical differential geometry of surfaces and modern soliton theory.The authors also explore the extensive body of literature from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by such eminent geometers as Bianchi, Darboux, Bäcklund, and Eisenhart on transformations of privileged classes of surfaces which leave key geometric properties unchanged.Prominent amongst these are Bäcklund-Darboux transformations with their remarkable associated nonlinear superposition principles and importance in soliton theory. ... Read more

Book Description

This book is a systematic study of the classical and quantum theories of gauge systems. It starts with Dirac's analysis showing that gauge theories are constrained Hamiltonian systems. The classical foundations of BRST theory are then laid out with a review of the necessary concepts from homological algebra. Reducible gauge systems are discussed, and the relationship between BRST cohomology and gauge invariance is carefully explained. The authors then proceed to the canonical quantization of gauge systems, first without ghosts (reduced phase space quantization, Dirac method) and second in the BRST context (quantum BRST cohomology). The path integral is discussed next. The analysis covers indefinite metric systems, operator insertions, and Ward identities. The antifield formalism is also studied and its equivalence with canonical methods is derived. The examples of electromagnetism and abelian 2-form gauge fields are treated in detail.

The book gives a general and unified treatment of the subject in a self-contained manner. Exercises are provided at the end of each chapter, and pedagogical examples are covered in the text. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Excellent overview of quantum gauge theory
Anyone interested in how to quantize gauge theories and BRST cohomology will want to read this book. The authors do a fine job of motivating the problem and discussing in depth where the essential problems arise. The book starts naturally with a discussion of constrained Hamiltonian systems, and this chapter is especially well written as it sets up the geometry for later discussions on quantization. Most of the discussion in the next few chapters is on geometrical constructions in classical gauge field theory. The authors do a fine job of explaining how Grassman algebra constructions come into play in classical field theory. To a beginner in the subject the appearance of "spin" degrees of freedom in classical field theory may be strange at first, but the chapter on Fermi degrees of freedom alleviates any skepticism on why one should proceed this way. BRST constructions occupy the next few chapters, and here one sees the role of ghosts as being a sort of "Lagrange multiplier" in the quantization of constrained systems. The authors discuss path integral quantization in the last chapters of the book, and do so in a way that is mostly formal, given that path integrals are not well defined from a mathematical standpoint. By far the best part of this discussion is on the Koszul-Tate complex and how it is related to the Schwinger-Dyson equations. It would take a lot of searching in the journal literature to obtain the knowledge gained from the reading of this book. Definitely a fine addition to the literature on this very difficult topic. ... Read more

Book Description

This excellent text covers a year’s course in advanced theoretical electromagnetism, first introducing theory, then its application. Topics include vectors D and H inside matter, conservation laws for energy, momentum, invariance, form invariance, covariance in special relativity and more.
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Reviews (2)

Another good electromagnetics book
This is a great book! The treatment is accessible and the section on electrostatics is outstanding in comparison with many other books. The author goes out of his way to both explain the subject in detail and to share his rather obvious enjoyment of the subject. This is another case of "if you read all these books then you will know electrodynamics". Not everything is here but it is a great supplemental text and reference. I don't know if anyone is using it as a single textbook for a course however. For the practical physicist in solid state, optics, electrodynamics, etc. this is a must have.

A great book for the applied physicist.
There is a tendency nowadays, especially if you are at Harvard, to think of a physicist as someone who only works on group-theoretical notions and topological structures in particle physics and cosmology, with everything else that looks something like physics to be worked on by crude, practical people in a electrical engineering department. This book, however, which was developed by a professor at Harvard's neighbor MIT, obviously has the attitude that the solution of partial differential equations applied to idealized (and therefore analytically solvable) problems in electromagnetic theory is still exciting physics. As such, this book belongs in the same class as Sommerfeld's "Electrodynamics" and Stratton's "Electromagnetic Theory." It is clearly written with good problem sets and covers enough material for a beginning graduate course. The units used are Gaussian, which makes for a better discussion of relativistic concepts. The mathematics used includes contour integrals, Green functions, and Hankel functions. At first sight, the author's use of only E and B and never D and H may come across as the fanaticism of the ultra-pure physicist. On the contrary, it makes for a clearer discussion of the boundary-value problem at the interface of continuous polarized and magnetic media. ... Read more

Book Description

This book presents a survey of the theory of coherent states, wavelets and some of their generalizations, emphasizing mathematical structures. The point of view is that the theories of wavelets and coherent states can both be subsumed into a single mathematical structure. Starting from the standard theory of coherent states over Lie groups, the authors generalize the formalism by associating coherent states to group representations that are square integrable over a homogeneous space. A further step allows one to dispense with the group context altogether. Within the group context, wavelets are coherent states of the affine group of the real line, and higher dimensional wavelets are coherent states of other groups. This unified background makes transparent an entire range of properties of coherent states.

Approximately one third of the book is devoted to the subject of wavelets, another third to coherent states and the remaining third to a development of the mathematical tools, including a discussion of abstract multiresolution analysis; tau-wavelets are discussed in the context of quasiperiodic discrete wavelets. Many concrete examples are discussed in detail, using semisimple Lie groups, relativity groups and several kinds of wavelets.

Intended as an introduction to current research for graduate students and others entering the field, the book is designed for self study, and the mathematical discussion is self-contained. The treatment does not presume any previous acquaintance with either wavelets or coherent states. With its extensive references to the research literature, the book will also be a useful compendium of recent results for physicists and mathematicians already active in the field. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Good, But Needs a New Edition
This book was written in 1987, and many parts of it are still germane. The approach to solving DSP problems, and of testing DSP circuitry are timeless, as long as DSP circuits will exist.

What does need to be updated is text that reflects the massive gains in DSP complexity and speed since then. If anything, the debugging problems are much harder now, due to these hardware advances. In an industrial context, this is important because the Automated Test Equipment field has had to make massive investments in upgrading, to maintain its usefulness.

Overall, you can still find the book useful today, for its problem solving way of thinking. ... Read more

Book Description

Gravity waves exist in all types of geophysical fluids, such as lakes, oceans, and atmospheres. They play an important role in redistributing energy at disturbances, such as mountains or seamounts and they are routinely studied in meteorology and oceanography, particularly simulation models, atmospheric weather models, turbulence, air pollution, and climate research.
An Introduction to Atmospheric Gravity Waves provides readers with a working background of the fundamental physics and mathematics of gravity waves, and introduces a wide variety of applications and numerous recent advances.

Nappo provides a concise volume on gravity waves with a lucid discussion of current observational techniques and instrumentation.
An accompanying CD-ROM contains real data, computer codes for data analysis, and linear gravity wave models to further enhance the reader's understanding of the book's material. Foreword is written by Prof. George Chimonas, a renowned expert on the interactions of gravity waves with turbulence.

CD containing real data, computer codes for data analysis and linear gravity wave models included with the text ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A Biased Opinion
I am neither a physicist nor a mathematician and, unfortunatly, cannot understand the majority of the thoughts of this book, but with a background in the art industry, I commend the author on his selection of photos and the illustrations he created for the work and especially for the dedication, devotion and time spent in writing it.It is a pleasure to look through it. ... Read more