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Books in Physics

Physics titles offer comprehensive research and advancements across the fundamental and applied areas of physical science. From quantum mechanics and particle physics to astrophysics and materials science, these titles drive innovation and deepen understanding of the principles governing the universe. Essential for researchers, educators, and students, this collection supports scientific progress and practical applications across a diverse range of physics disciplines.

  • Advances in Metal and Semiconductor Clusters

    Metal Ion Solvation and Metal-Ligand Interactions
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 5
    • M.A. Duncan
    • English
    In previous volumes in this series, Advances in Metal and Semiconductor Clusters, the focus has been on atomic clusters of metals, semiconductors and carbon. Fundamental gas phase studies have been surveyed, and most recently scientists have explored new materials which can be produced from clusters or cluster precursors. In this latest volume, the focus shifts to clusters composed primarily of non-metal molecules or atoms which have one or more metal atoms seeded into the cluster as an impurity. These clusters provide model systems for metal ion solvation processes and metal-ligand interactions.Metal-l... bonding underlies the vast fields of organometallic chemistry, transition metal chemistry and homogeneous catalysis. Catalytic activity, ligand displacement reactions and photochemical activity depend on the specific details of metal-ligand bonding. Likewise, metal ions are ubiquitous in chemistry and biology and weaker electrostatic interactions play a leading role in their function. In solution, metals exist in different charge states depending on the conditions, and the solvation environment strongly influences their chemistry. Many enzymes have metal ions at their active sites, and electrostatic interactions influence the selectivity for metal ion transport through cell membranes. Metal ions (e.g., Mg+, Ca+) are deposited into the earth's atmosphere by meteor ablation, resulting in a rich variety of atmospheric chemistry. Similarly, metal ions ( Mg+) have been observed in planetary atmospheres and in the impact of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter. In various circumstances, the electrostatic interactions of metal ions determine the outcome of significant chemistry. Cluster chemistry has made significant contributions to the understanding of these stronger metal ligand interactions and weaker metal ion solvation interactions. In this volume, the authors explore a variety of work in these general areas, where new cluster science techniques in the gas phase have made it possible to synthesize new kinds of complexes with metals and to measure their properties in detail.

  • Neuro-informatics and Neural Modelling

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 4
    • F. Moss + 1 more
    • English
    How do sensory neurons transmit information about environmental stimuli to the central nervous system? How do networks of neurons in the CNS decode that information, thus leading to perception and consciousness? These questions are among the oldest in neuroscience. Quite recently, new approaches to exploration of these questions have arisen, often from interdisciplinary approaches combining traditional computational neuroscience with dynamical systems theory, including nonlinear dynamics and stochastic processes. In this volume in two sections a selection of contributions about these topics from a collection of well-known authors is presented. One section focuses on computational aspects from single neurons to networks with a major emphasis on the latter. The second section highlights some insights that have recently developed out of the nonlinear systems approach.

  • Oxide Surfaces

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 9
    • English
    The book is a multi-author survey (in 15 chapters) of the current state of knowledge and recent developments in our understanding of oxide surfaces. The author list includes most of the acknowledged world experts in this field. The material covered includes fundamental theory and experimental studies of the geometrical, vibrational and electronic structure of such surfaces, but with a special emphasis on the chemical properties and associated reactivity. The main focus is on metal oxides but coverage extends from 'simple' rocksalt materials such as MgO through to complex transition metal oxides with different valencies.

  • Crystallization

    • 4th Edition
    • J W Mullin
    • English
    Since the first publication of this definitive work nearly 40 years ago, this fourth edition has been completely rewritten. Crystallization is used at some stage in nearly all process industries as a method of production, purification or recovery of solid materials. Incorporating all the recent developments and applications of crystallization technology, Crystallization gives clear accounts of the underlying principles, a review of the past and current research themes and guidelines for equipment and process design. This new edition introduces and enlarges upon such subjects as: Control and Separation of polymorphs and chiral crystals Micro- and macro-mixing and the use of computer fluid dynamics Seeding and secondary nucleation in batch crystallization processes Incorporation of upstream and downstream requirements into design procedures for crystallization plant Computer-aided molecular design and its use in crystal habit modifier selection Crystallization provides a comprehensive overview of the subject and will prove invaluable to all chemical engineers and industrial chemists in the process industries as well as crystallization workers and students in industry and academia. Crystallization is written with the precision and clarity of style that is John Mullin's hallmark - a special feature being the large number of appendices that provide relevant physical property data.

  • Introduction to Relativity

    For Physicists and Astronomers
    • 1st Edition
    • John B. Kogut
    • English
    Introduction to Relativity is intended to teach physics and astronomy majors at the freshman, sophomore or upper-division levels how to think about special and general relativity in a fundamental, but accessible, way. Designed to render any reader a "master of relativity", everything on the subject is comprehensible and derivable from first principles. The book emphasizes problem solving, contains abundant problem sets, and is conveniently organized to meet the needs of both student and instructor.

  • Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths

    High Temperature Rare Earths Superconductors - I
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 30
    • K.A. Gschneidner + 2 more
    • English
    This volume of the Handbook is the first of a two-volume set of reviews devoted to the rare-earth-based high-temperature oxide superconductors (commonly known as hiTC superconductors). The history of hiTC superconductors is a few months short of being 14 years old when Bednorz and Müller published their results which showed that (La,BA)2CuO4 had a superconducting transition of ~30 K, which was about 7K higher than any other known superconducting material. Within a year the upper temperature limit was raised to nearly 100K with the discovery of an ~90K superconducting transition in YBa2Cu3O7-&dgr;. The announcement of a superconductor with a transition temperature higher than the boiling point of liquid nitrogen set-off a frenzy of research on trying to find other oxide hiTC superconductors. Within a few months the maximum superconducting transition reached 110 K (Bi2Sr2Ca2Cu3010, and then 122K (TlBa2Ca3Cu4O11. It took several years to push TC up another 11 K to 133 K with the discovery of superconductivity in HgBa2Ca2Cu3O8, which is still the record holder today.

  • Progress in Optics

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 41
    • English
    The first volume of this text was published in 1961, only a few months after the invention of the laser. This event triggered a wealth of developments, many of which were reported in the 240 review articles which were published in this series since its inception. The present volume contains seven articles covering a wide range of subjects. The first article presents a review of various optical effects in spherical and circular micro-cavities capable of supporting high-Q resonant modes (commonly referred to as morphology-dependent resonances (MDRs) or whispering gallery modes (WGMs)). The second presents a comprehensive review of the theory and practice of optical disk data storage. Other articles include discussions on delay control systems for wideband phased array antennas, and quantum statistical properties of optical beams interacting in nonlinear couplers.

  • III-Nitride Semiconductors

    Electrical, Structural and Defects Properties
    • 1st Edition
    • M.O. Manasreh
    • English
    Research advances in III-nitride semiconductor materials and device have led to an exponential increase in activity directed towards electronic and optoelectronic applications. There is also great scientific interest in this class of materials because they appear to form the first semiconductor system in which extended defects do not severely affect the optical properties of devices. The volume consists of chapters written by a number of leading researchers in nitride materials and device technology with the emphasis on the dopants incorporations, impurities identifications, defects engineering, defects characterization, ion implantation, irradiation-induced defects, residual stress, structural defects and phonon confinement. This unique volume provides a comprehensive review and introduction of defects and structural properties of GaN and related compounds for newcomers to the field and stimulus to further advances for experienced researchers. Given the current level of interest and research activity directed towards nitride materials and devices, the publication of the volume is particularly timely. Early pioneering work by Pankove and co-workers in the 1970s yielded a metal-insulator-semi... GaN light-emitting diode (LED), but the difficulty of producing p-type GaN precluded much further effort. The current level of activity in nitride semiconductors was inspired largely by the results of Akasaki and co-workers and of Nakamura and co-workers in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the development of p-type doping in GaN and the demonstration of nitride-based LEDs at visible wavelengths. These advances were followed by the successful fabrication and commercialization of nitride blue laser diodes by Nakamura et al at Nichia. The chapters contained in this volume constitutes a mere sampling of the broad range of research on nitride semiconductor materials and defect issues currently being pursued in academic, government, and industrial laboratories worldwide.

  • Molecular Mechanisms in Visual Transduction

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 3
    • D.G. Stavenga + 2 more
    • English
    Molecular mechanisms in visual transduction is presently one of the most intensely studied areas in the field of signal transduction research in biological cells. Because the sense of vision plays a primary role in animal biology, and thus has been subject to long evolutionary development, the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying vision have a high degree of sensitivity and versatility. The aims of visual transduction research are firstto determine which molecules participate, and then to understand how they act in concert to produce the exquisite electrical responses of the photoreceptor cells.Since the 1940s [1] we have known that rod vision begins with the capture of a quantum of energy, a photon, by a visual pigment molecule, rhodopsin. As the function of photon absorption is to convert the visual pigment molecule into a G-protein activating state, the structural details of the visual pigments must beexplained from the perspective of their role in activating their specific G-proteins. Thus, Chapters 1-3 of this Handbook extensively cover the physico-chemical molecular characteristics of the vertebrate rhodopsins. Following photoconversion and G-protein activation, the phototransduction cascade leads to modifications of the population of closed and open ion channels in the photoreceptor plasma membrane, and thereby to the electrical response. The nature of the channels of vertebrate photoreceptors is examined in Chapter 4, and Chapter 5 integrates the present body of knowledge of the activation steps in the cascade into a quantitative framework. Once the phototransduction cascade is activated, it must be subsequently silenced. The various molecular mechanisms participating in inactivation aretreated in Chapters 1-4 and especially Chapter 5. Molecular biology is now an indispensable tool in signal transduction studies. Numerous vertebrate (Chapter 6) and invertebrate (Chapter 7) visual pigments have been characterized and cloned. The genetics and evolutionary aspects of this great subfamily of G-protein activating receptors are intriguing as they present a natural probe for the intimate relationship between structure and function of the visual pigments. Understanding the spectral characteristics from the molecular composition can be expected to

  • Quantum Theory, Deformation and Integrability

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 186
    • R. Carroll
    • English
    About four years ago a prominent string theorist was quoted as saying that it might be possible to understand quantum mechanics by the year 2000. Sometimes new mathematical developments make such understanding appear possible and even close, but on the other hand, increasing lack of experimental verification make it seem to be further distant. In any event one seems to arrive at new revolutions in physics and mathematics every year. This book hopes to convey some of the excitment of this period, but will adopt a relatively pedestrian approach designed to illuminate the relations between quantum and classical. There will be some discussion of philosophical matters such as measurement, uncertainty, decoherence, etc. but philosophy will not be emphasized; generally we want to enjoy the fruits of computation based on the operator formulation of QM and quantum field theory. In Chapter 1 connections of QM to deterministic behavior are exhibited in the trajectory representations of Faraggi-Matone. Chapter 1 also includes a review of KP theory and some preliminary remarks on coherent states, density matrices, etc. and more on deterministic theory. We develop in Chapter 4 relations between quantization and integrability based on Moyal brackets, discretizations, KP, strings and Hirota formulas, and in Chapter 2 we study the QM of embedded curves and surfaces illustrating some QM effects of geometry. Chapter 3 is on quantum integrable systems, quantum groups, and modern deformation quantization. Chapter 5 involves the Whitham equations in various roles mediating between QM and classical behavior. In particular, connections to Seiberg-Witten theory (arising in N = 2 supersymmetric (susy) Yang-Mills (YM) theory) are discussed and we would still like to understand more deeply what is going on. Thus in Chapter 5 we will try to give some conceptual background for susy, gauge theories, renormalization, etc. from both a physical and mathematical point of view. In Chapter 6 we continue the deformation quantization then by exhibiting material based on and related to noncommutative geometry and gauge theory.

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