Giovanni Vignale – författare

The realm of theoretical physics is teeming with abstract and beautiful concepts. And the task of imagining them is one that demands profound creativity, argues Giovanni Vignale. Explaining them is curiously akin to the craft of poets, or magical realist novelists such as Borges, and Musil, or Bulgakov''s The Master and Margarita.In this unusual and sometimes poetic book, Vignale presents his own unorthodox accounts of fundamental theoretical concepts such as Newtonian mechanics, superconductivity, and Einstein''s theory of relativity, showing that what may seem at first quite simple in fact turns out to be much more profound. As we delve behind now-familiar metaphors such as ''electron spin'' and ''black hole'', the world that we take for granted melts away, leaving a glimpse of something much stranger.

The realm of theoretical physics is teeming with abstract and beautiful concepts. And the task of imagining them is one that demands profound creativity, argues Giovanni Vignale. Explaining them is curiously akin to the craft of poets, or magical realist novelists such as Borges, and Musil, or Bulgakov''s The Master and Margarita.In this unusual and sometimes poetic book, Vignale presents his own unorthodox accounts of fundamental theoretical concepts such as Newtonian mechanics, superconductivity, and Einstein''s theory of relativity, showing that what may seem at first quite simple in fact turns out to be much more profound. As we delve behind now-familiar metaphors such as ''electron spin'' and ''black hole'', the world that we take for granted melts away, leaving a glimpse of something much stranger.

This book is an outcome of the International Workshop on Electronic Density Functional Theory, held at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, in July 1996. Density functional theory, standing as it does at the boundary between the disciplines of physics, chemistry, and materials science, is a great mixer. Invited experts from North America, Europe, and Australia mingled with students from several disciplines, rapidly taking up the informal style for which Australia is famous. A list of participants is given at the end of the book. Density functional theory (DFT) is a subtle approach to the very difficult problem of predicting the behavior of many interacting particles. A major application is the study of many-electron systems. This was the workshop theme, embracing inter alia computational chemistry and condensed matter physics. DFT circumvents the more conceptually straightforward (but more computationally intensive) approach in which one solves the many-body Schrodinger equation. It relies instead on rather delicate considerations involving the electron number density. For many years the pioneering work of Kohn and Sham (the Local Density Ap­ proximation of 1965 and immediate extensions) represented the state of the art in DFT. This approach was widely used for its appealing simplicity and computability, but gave rather modest accuracy. In the last few years there has been a renaissance of interest, quite largely due to the remarkable success of the new generation of gradient functionals whose initiators include invitees to the workshop (Perdew, Parr, Yang).

Modern electronic devices and novel materials often derive their extraordinary properties from the intriguing, complex behavior of large numbers of electrons forming what is known as an electron liquid. This book provides an in-depth introduction to the physics of the interacting electron liquid in a broad variety of systems, including metals, semiconductors, artificial nano-structures, atoms and molecules. One, two and three dimensional systems are treated separately and in parallel. Different phases of the electron liquid, from the Landau Fermi liquid to the Wigner crystal, from the Luttinger liquid to the quantum Hall liquid are extensively discussed. Both static and time-dependent density functional theory are presented in detail. Although the emphasis is on the development of the basic physical ideas and on a critical discussion of the most useful approximations, the formal derivation of the results is highly detailed and based on the simplest, most direct methods.

This book is an outcome of the International Workshop on Electronic Density Functional Theory, held at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, in July 1996. Density functional theory, standing as it does at the boundary between the disciplines of physics, chemistry, and materials science, is a great mixer. Invited experts from North America, Europe, and Australia mingled with students from several disciplines, rapidly taking up the informal style for which Australia is famous. A list of participants is given at the end of the book. Density functional theory (DFT) is a subtle approach to the very difficult problem of predicting the behavior of many interacting particles. A major application is the study of many-electron systems. This was the workshop theme, embracing inter alia computational chemistry and condensed matter physics. DFT circumvents the more conceptually straightforward (but more computationally intensive) approach in which one solves the many-body Schrodinger equation. It relies instead on rather delicate considerations involving the electron number density. For many years the pioneering work of Kohn and Sham (the Local Density Ap­ proximation of 1965 and immediate extensions) represented the state of the art in DFT. This approach was widely used for its appealing simplicity and computability, but gave rather modest accuracy. In the last few years there has been a renaissance of interest, quite largely due to the remarkable success of the new generation of gradient functionals whose initiators include invitees to the workshop (Perdew, Parr, Yang).

This book is an outcome of the International Workshop on Electronic Density Functional Theory, held at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, in July 1996. Density functional theory, standing as it does at the boundary between the disciplines of physics, chemistry, and materials science, is a great mixer. Invited experts from North America, Europe, and Australia mingled with students from several disciplines, rapidly taking up the informal style for which Australia is famous. A list of participants is given at the end of the book. Density functional theory (DFT) is a subtle approach to the very difficult problem of predicting the behavior of many interacting particles. A major application is the study of many-electron systems. This was the workshop theme, embracing inter alia computational chemistry and condensed matter physics. DFT circumvents the more conceptually straightforward (but more computationally intensive) approach in which one solves the many-body Schrodinger equation. It relies instead on rather delicate considerations involving the electron number density. For many years the pioneering work of Kohn and Sham (the Local Density Ap­ proximation of 1965 and immediate extensions) represented the state of the art in DFT. This approach was widely used for its appealing simplicity and computability, but gave rather modest accuracy. In the last few years there has been a renaissance of interest, quite largely due to the remarkable success of the new generation of gradient functionals whose initiators include invitees to the workshop (Perdew, Parr, Yang).

?This book presents a compact personal biography and a collection of works by Gabriele F. Giuliani's former students and collaborators and a number of personal recollections by friends and colleagues which shed light on the complex, multifaceted personality of a physicist who was also a passionate soccer player and formula Ford pilot.