Antti Niemi - Böcker

This is a collection of papers on a variety of topics of current interest in mathematical physics: integrable systems, quantum groups, topological quantum theory, string theory. Some of the contributions are lengthy reviews of lasting value on subjects like symplectic geometry of the Chern-Simons theory or on mirror symmetry. The book addresses graduate students as well as researchers in mathematical physics.

Professor Roman Jackiw is a theoretical physicist renowned for his many fundamental contributions and discoveries in quantum and classical field theories, ranging from high energy physics and gravitation to condensed matter and the physics of fluids. Among his major achievements is the establishment of the presence of the famous Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomalies in quantum field theory, a discovery with far-reaching implications for the structure of the Standard Model of particle physics and all attempts to go beyond it. Other important contributions, among many, that one may mention here are the topological mass term in gravity and gauge theories, and the fractionalization of fermion number and charge in the presence of topological objects.Roman Jackiw, a Professor Emeritus at the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics, is the recipient of several international awards including the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics and the Dirac Medal of the ICTP. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and honorary doctor of Kiev, Montreal, Tours, Turin and Uppsala universities.To celebrate his 80th birthday, many students and colleagues of Professor Jackiw have come together to share interesting anecdotes of working with him as well as their latest research, some of it inspired by his work. Edited by his former students Antti Niemi and Terry Tomboulis together with his long-time friend KK Phua, this festschrift volume is a must-have collection for all theoretical physicists.

Frank Wilczek is one of the foremost theoretical physicists of the past half-century. He has made several fundamental contributions that shape our understanding of high energy physics, cosmology, condensed matter physics, and statistical physics. In all these fields his many discoveries continue to play a key role in shaping the direction of modern theoretical physics.Among Wilczek's major achievements is the discovery of asymptotic freedom, which predicts and explains the ultraviolet behavior of non-abelian gauge theories. The axion, which he co-discovered and named, has emerged as the prevalent candidate for explaining the origin of dark matter in the Universe. His invention of color-flavor locking explains chiral symmetry breaking in high density quantum chromodynamics. His introduction of fractional statistics and anyons are pivotal to our understanding of the fractional quantum Hall effect and form the building blocks of topological quantum computing. His invention of the time crystal concept has catalyzed extensive investigations of dynamical phases of physical systems.Frank Wilczek received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of asymptotic freedom. He is also the recipient of several Prizes and honorary awards including the MacArthur Fellowship, the Lorentz Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, the High Energy and Particle Physics Prize of the European Physical Society, and the King Faisal International Prize for Science of the King Faisal Foundation. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He is also a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Sweden.He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at MIT Center for Theoretical Physics. He also holds a professorship at Stockholm University, is a Distinguished Professor at Arizona State University, and is the founding director of the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute and Chief Scientist of the Wilczek Quantum Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.This volume serves as a tribute to Frank Wilczek's legendary scientific contributions, commemorating his 70th birthday and the first 50 years of his career as a theoretical physicist. The contributors include several of his PhD students, close collaborators, and both past and present colleagues.

This unique volume summarizes with a historical perspective several of the major scientific achievements of Ludwig Faddeev, with a foreword by Nobel Laureate C N Yang. The volume that spans over fifty years of Faddeev's career begins where he started his own scientific research, in the subject of scattering theory and the three-body problem. It then continues to describe Faddeev's contributions to automorphic functions, followed by an extensive account of his many fundamental contributions to quantum field theory including his original article on ghosts with Popov. Faddeev's contributions to soliton theory and integrable models are then described, followed by a survey of his work on quantum groups. The final scientific section is devoted to Faddeev's contemporary research including articles on his long-term interest in constructing knotted solitons and understanding confinement. The volume concludes with his personal view on science and mathematical physics in particular.