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During the past years, dramatic improvements in methods of observing astrophysical phenomena space have added to our knowledge of the universe. This book presents an overview of physical cosmology, and also discusses the attempts to understand the origin and structure of the universe.

Stochastic mechanics is a description of quantum phenomena in classical probabilistic terms. This work contains an account of the kinematics of diffusion processes, including diffusions on curved manifolds that are necessary for the treatment of spin in stochastic mechanics.

The Dutch scientist Hendrik Kramers (1894-1952) was one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the twentieth century. This work presents a comprehensive discussion of Kramers' scientific work, and reprints twelve of his most important papers.

Problems in theoretical physics often lead to paradoxical answers; yet closer reasoning and a more complete analysis invariably lead to the resolution of the paradox. This work is based on the author's lectures at the University of Washington in the spring of 1977 and at the Institut de Physique Nucleaire, University de Paris-Sud, Orsay.

Draws from many diverse fields of theoretical physics to present problems in which the answer differs from what our intuition had led us to expect. This book is suitable for both graduate students and their teachers.

Suitable for readers familiar with relativistic quantum field theory who wish to learn about the supersymmetry algebra, this volume includes a derivation of the most general coupling of super-symmetric gauge theory to supergravity. It also emphasizes the logical coherence of the subject.

In the 1930s, physics was in a crisis. In the post-World War II period, four eminent physicists rose to the challenge and developed a calculable version of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). This book tells the story of these four physicists, blending discussions of their scientific work with biographical sketches.

Discusses Einstein" 's geometric theory of gravity. This book explains the understanding of the link between gravitation and inertia in Einstein's theory, from the origin of inertia in some cosmological models of the universe, to the interpretation of the initial value formulation of Einstein's standard geometrodynamics.

In the Shadow of the Bomb narrates how two charismatic, exceptionally talented physicists--J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hans A. Bethe--came to terms with the nuclear weapons they helped to create. In 1945, the United States dropped the bomb, and physicists were forced to contemplate disquieting questions about their roles and responsibilities. When the Cold War followed, they were confronted with political demands for their loyalty and McCarthyism's threats to academic freedom. By examining how Oppenheimer and Bethe--two men with similar backgrounds but divergent aspirations and characters--struggled with these moral dilemmas, one of our foremost historians of physics tells the story of modern physics, the development of atomic weapons, and the Cold War. Oppenheimer and Bethe led parallel lives. Both received liberal educations that emphasized moral as well as intellectual growth. Both were outstanding theoreticians who worked on the atom bomb at Los Alamos. Both advised the government on nuclear issues, and both resisted the development of the hydrogen bomb. Both were, in their youth, sympathetic to liberal causes, and both were later called to defend the United States against Soviet communism and colleagues against anti-Communist crusaders. Finally, both prized scientific community as a salve to the apparent failure of Enlightenment values. Yet, their responses to the use of the atom bomb, the testing of the hydrogen bomb, and the treachery of domestic politics differed markedly. Bethe, who drew confidence from scientific achievement and integration into the physics community, preserved a deep integrity. By accepting a modest role, he continued to influence policy and contributed to the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963. In contrast, Oppenheimer first embodied a new scientific persona--the scientist who creates knowledge and technology affecting all humanity and boldly addresses their impact--and then could not carry its burden. His desire to retain insider status, combined with his isolation from creative work and collegial scientific community, led him to compromise principles and, ironically, to lose prestige and fall victim to other insiders. Schweber draws on his vast knowledge of science and its history--in addition to his unique access to the personalities involved--to tell a tale of two men that will enthrall readers interested in science, history, and the lives and minds of great thinkers.

Presents articles which are based on invited talks presented at a conference honoring Nobel laureate Philip W Anderson of Princeton University, who coined the phrase "More is different". This title covers numerous topics under the umbrellas of superconductivity, superfluidity, magnetism, electron localization, and interacting electronic systems.

Offers a treatment of interpretation (in nonrelativistic physics). This book enables readers to check every step, apply techniques to problems, and make sure that no paradox or obscurity arises in the theory. It discusses various philosophical implications pertinent to the study of quantum mechanics. It is intended for physicists and students.

Discusses string theory and the future of particle physics. This book describes the search for neutrino oscillations. It anticipates a new generation of particle accelerators. It reviews classical gravitation and the high-precision experiments. It also examines the breakthroughs in observational cosmology.

Opinions on the large-scale structure of the early universe range from primeval chaos to a well-ordered mass distribution. This work argues that the evolution proceeded from a nearly uniform initial state to a progressively irregular and clumpy universe. It also describes progress in the use of statistical measures of the clustering.

Recently a symbiotic relationship between particle and nuclear physics has developed, with techniques and ideas from one field fertilizing developments in the other. This work outlines concepts from modern particle physics important to the current understanding of nuclear physics and reviews experiments involving nuclei which have influenced the present particle physics view of the weak interaction. In his discussion, the author summarizes both past and present activity in the field and identifies areas for future work. Familiarity with quantum mechanics is assumed in the presentation of ideas in this book intended for readers at the graduate level and beyond. A major goal of Weak Interactions in Nuclei is to encourage further activity at the intersection of particle and nuclear physics, two path-breaking areas of study in modern physics.Originally published in 1989.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Addressing a variety of theoretical cosmological problems, and emphasizing a mathematical approach, this volume nicely complements Peebles' Physical Cosmology (Princeton Series in Physics, 1971). Ryan and Shepley have concentrated on the structure of models of the universe. By using a modern terminology that emphasizes the operator nature of vectors and tensors, as opposed to their components in a particular coordinate system, the authors develop modern tensor analysis to the point where it can be applied to general relativistic cosmology. They then use it to describe homogeneous cosmologies in considerable detail. Both students and researchers are likely to find these techniques especially useful.Among their subjects are: spaces with groups of motions; singularities; Taub-NUT-Misner space; Bianchitype models; Hamiltonian cosmology; and perturbations in anisotropic models. A brief section on observations is also included, as is a complete bibliography. A final section presents graded exercises that underscore the potential yet unrealized in this area of study.Originally published in 1975.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In this book, Robert Israel considers classical and quantum lattice systems in terms of equilibrium statistical mechanics. He is especially concerned with the characterization of translation-invariant equilibrium states by a variational principle and the use of convexity in studying these states. Arthur Wightman's Introduction gives a general and historical perspective on convexity in statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. Professor Israel then reviews the general framework of the theory of lattice gases. In addition to presenting new and more direct proofs of some known results, he uses a version of a theorem by Bishop and Phelps to obtain existence results for phase transitions. Furthermore, he shows how the Gibbs Phase Rule and the existence of a wide variety of phase transitions follow from the general framework and the theory of convex functions. While the behavior of some of these phase transitions is very "e;pathological,"e; others exhibit more "e;reasonable"e; behavior. As an example, the author considers the isotropic Heisenberg model. Formulating a version of the Gibbs Phase Rule using Hausdorff dimension, he shows that the finite dimensional subspaces satisfying this phase rule are generic.Originally published in 1979.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

From the Nobel Prize-winning physicistMan's view of the universe is widening today, as it did once before in the early days of big telescopes and photographic plates. Modern man, by means of radio, infrared, optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray astronomy, can penetrate the universe to depths never before explored. Phillip James Edwin Peebles has written a pioneering work in this newly defined area of investigation. Intended to bridge the chasm between classical textbooks on cosmology and modern developments, Physical Cosmology serves as a guide to current points of debate in a rapidly changing field.Originally published in 1972.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This monograph combines a thorough introduction to the mathematical foundations of n-body Schrodinger mechanics with numerous new results.Originally published in 1971.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A timely addition to the literature, this volume contains authoritative reviews of three important areas in the physics of elementary particles. Sam B. Treiman, in "e;Current Algebra and PCAC,"e; reviews the present state of the weak interactions. In "e;Field Theoretic Investigations in Current Algebra,"e; Roman Jackiw deals with recent developments in current algebra and its applications, giving particular attention to anomalies. David J. Gross covers the high energy inelastic lepton-hadron scattering in his paper, "e;The High Energy Behavior of Weak and Electromagnetic Interactions."e;Originally published in 1972.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A novel interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed in brief form by Hugh Everett in 1957, forms the nucleus around which this book has developed. In his interpretation, Dr. Everett denies the existence of a separate classical realm and asserts the propriety of considering a state vector for the whole universe. Because this state vector nev

Barry Simon's book both summarizes and introduces the remarkable progress in constructive quantum field theory that can be attributed directly to the exploitation of Euclidean methods. During the past two years deep relations on both the physical level and on the level of the mathematical structure have been either uncovered or made rigorous. Connections between quantum fields and the statistical mechanics of ferromagnets have been established, for example, that now allow one to prove numerous inequalities in quantum field theory.In the first part of the book, the author presents the Euclidean methods on an axiomatic level and on the constructive level where the traditional results of the P(o)2 theory are translated into the new language. In the second part Professor Simon gives one of the approaches for constructing models of non-trivial, two-dimensional Wightman fields-specifically, the method of correlation inequalities. He discusses other approaches briefly.Drawn primarily from the author's lectures at the Eidenossiehe Technische Hochschule, Zurich, in 1973, the volume will appeal to physicists and mathematicians alike; it is especially suitable for those with limited familiarity with the literature of this very active field.Originally published in 1974.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Some of the articles in this collection give up-to-date accounts of areas in mathematical physics to which Valentine Bargmann made pioneering contributions. The others treat a selection of the most interesting current topics in the field. The contributions include both reviews and original results. Contents: The Inverse r-Squared Force (Henry D. I