Power of the Invisible : The Quantessence of Reality.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bais, Sander.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Quantum theory.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (697 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2024.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Quantum Physics is the solid basis of most of our understanding of nature and has been the driver of many technological advances. The trilogy Power of the Invisible: The Quantessence of Reality gives a coherent account of this huge domain of knowledge, which is linked to some fifty Nobel prizes and is one of the greatest scientific achievements of the twentieth century. This quantum story follows three lines in parallel: a pictorial, an explanatory and a mathematical one.

Contents:

Intro

Table of Contents

A preface of prefaces

Introduction

Nature is quantized

Physics, mathematics and concepts

I The journey: from classical to quantum worlds

I.1 The gems of classical physics

Mission almost completed

Newtonian mechanics and gravity

Four laws only

Dynamical systems

Conservation lawssubjectsI]Conservation laws

Classical mechanics for aficionados

grey The shortest path

Maxwell's electromagnetism

The Maxwell equations

Electromagnetic wavessubjectsI]Electromagnetic waves

Lorentz invariance: the key to relativity

Gauge invariance: beauty and redundance

Monopoles: Nature's missed opportunity?

Statistical Physics: from micro to macro physics

Thermodynamics: the three laws

Understanding entropy.

grey Two cultures

Statistical mechanics

Statistical thermodynamics.

The ideal gas.

I.2 The age of geometry, information and quantum

Canaries in a coal mine

The physics of space-time

Special relativity

General relativity

Big Bang cosmology

Cosmic inflation

grey Much ado about nothing

The physics of geometry

Curved spaces (manifolds) and topology

The geometry of gauge invariance

The physics of information: from bits to qubits

Information and entropy

Models of computation

Going quantum

Quantum physics: the laws of matter

I.3 Universal constants, scales and units

Is man the measure of all things?

On time

Reinventing the meter

grey When the saints go marching in...

How universal is universal?

Theories outside their comfort zone

The virtue of heuristics

Natural units ©1898 Max Planck

Black holes

Black hole thermodynamics

Accelerated observers and the Unruh effect

The magic cube

I.4 The quest for basic building blocks

A splendid race to the bottom.

Fatal attraction: forces yield structure

Atomic structure

The Bohr atom: energy quantization

The Schrödinger atomsubjectsI]Schrödinger atom: three numbers

The discovery of spin

grey Behind the scenes

Fermions and bosons

Atoms: the building blocks of chemistry

Nuclear structure

Isotopes and nuclear decay modes

Positron-emission tomography (PET)

Transmutation: Fission and fusion

grey Chysopoeia?

ITER: the nuclear fusion reactor

Field theory: particle species and forces

The Dirac equation: matter and anti-matter

Quantum Electrodynamics: QED

Subnuclear structure

The Standard Model

Flavors, colors and families

The strong interactions

The electro-weak interactions

A brief history of unification.

Supersymmetry

Superstrings

Strings: all fields in one?

M-theory, D-branes and dualities

Holography and the AdS/CFT program

At home in the quantum world

Indices

Subject index Volume I

Name index Volume I

II Quantessence: how quantum theory works

Contents

III Hierarchies: the emergence of diversity

Appendix A Math Excursions

Appendix B Chronologies, ideas and people

Acknowledgements

About the Author:.

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-04-079922-1

90-485-6288-0

OCLC:

1419233670