Julio a. Gonzalo - Böcker

The first half of the book presents the effective field approach, which is certainly the simplest approach to investigate cooperative phenomena and the accompanying phase transitions. It provides a common, intuitive approximation to the physics of such diverse phenomena as liquid-vapor transitions, ferromagnetism, superconductivity, order-disorder in alloys, ferroelectricity, superfluidity and ferroelasticity. The connection between the effective field approach and Landau's phenomenological theory is stressed. The latter half is devoted to some specific applications of the effective field concept to ferroelectric systems.

The first half of the book presents the effective field approach, which is certainly the simplest approach to investigate cooperative phenomena and the accompanying phase transitions. It provides a common, intuitive approximation to the physics of such diverse phenomena as liquid-vapor transitions, ferromagnetism, superconductivity, order-disorder in alloys, ferroelectricity, superfluidity and ferroelasticity. The connection between the effective field approach and Landau's phenomenological theory is stressed. The latter half is devoted to some specific applications of the effective field concept to ferroelectric systems.

Materials physics is a very active research field at present and it is expected to remain so in the foreseeable future. Different spectroscopies are currently used to investigate the structure and dynamics of crystalline materials. Some traditional spectroscopies are presented in this book: optical, magnetic resonance, ultrasonic, brillouin, neutron scattering, soft mode and dielectric response spectroscopies. For all of them, the presentation is complemented with some reference material for more modern or sophisticated spectroscopies.This book should be useful as an introductory textbook for a short course on solid state spectroscopies. A number of exercises are worked out throughout the text. Ferro- and piezoelectric materials and their phase transitions are paid special attention.

Since the discovery in 1921 of ferroelectric properties in Rochelle salt by Valasek, no new ferroelectric material was found until Busch and Scherrer in Switzerland in 1935 discovered ferroelectricity in Potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP). However, during the Second World War, researchers in the US in 1943 discovered ferroelectric materials such as BaTiO3 having ferroelectric properties well above room temperature, that led to an explosion of research after the war in Western and Central Europe, Russia, and Japan, because of their promising and potential applications.This book gives an overview of relevant experimental and theoretical work in ferroelectricity. It is organized into three Sections, corresponding to three time periods. The first (1921-1960) includes early work by Valasek, works by Busch and Scherrer, Mason and Mattias, Shirane and Takeda, ending with theoretical work by Cochran on crystal stability and the soft mode theory of ferroelectricity. The second one (1961-2002) includes a number of experimental and theoretical publications on ferroelectric materials and ferroelectric transitions. The number of international meetings began to increase, and the number of papers increased exponentially. New subfields at that time included ferroelectric liquid crystals, thin films, dipolar glasses and relaxors.The last and final section (2002-2021) includes more recent publications on fundamental structural studies, neutron diffraction work on PZT, quantum tunneling and zero-point energy in ferroelectrics, investigations on the anomalous temperature dependence behavior of liquid water and other recent developments.The book will be a useful compendium on ferroelectrics for materials scientists, and/or PhD graduate students on ferroelectrics all around the world.

"Cosmic Paradoxes" was an outcome of a Conference-Summer Course on "Astrophysical Cosmology: Frontier Questions" held at El Escorial, Madrid, on August 16-19, 1993. The Scientific Directors were John C Mather, Director of NASA's COBE (Cosmic Background Radiation Explorer), and Jose M Torroja, Secretary of the Spanish Academy of Sciences. Julio A Gonzalo, UAM, was in charge of coordinating the event. The first speaker was Ralph A Alpher, one of the pioneers who predicted very early the CBR (Cosmic Background Radiation). The CBR was observed by A Penzias and R Wilson, Bell Telephone Labs, in 1965. Thereafter it was measured with unprecedented precision by the COBE in 1989, characterizing the Planck spectral distribution of the CBR (J C Mather) and detecting its minute anisotropies (G Smoot). In 2003 the WMAP, NASA's satellite successor of the COBE, confirmed COBE's results, and gave an excellent quantitative estimate of the "age" of the universe as 13.7 ± 0.2 Gyrs, in support of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins.In the Third Edition of this book, almost coincident with the launch reports of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), includes recent work discussing evidence in favor of an open finite universe. A further discussion of the Heisenberg-Lemaitre time (Appendix D) takes into consideration that the cosmic expansion velocity at very early times is Ṙ(yHL)≫c and reviews in more detail the thermal history of the universe.

"Cosmic Paradoxes" was an outcome of a Conference-Summer Course on "Astrophysical Cosmology: Frontier Questions" held at El Escorial, Madrid, on August 16-19, 1993. The Scientific Directors were John C Mather, Director of NASA's COBE (Cosmic Background Radiation Explorer), and Jose M Torroja, Secretary of the Spanish Academy of Sciences. Julio A Gonzalo, UAM, was in charge of coordinating the event. The first speaker was Ralph A Alpher, one of the pioneers who predicted very early the CBR (Cosmic Background Radiation). The CBR was observed by A Penzias and R Wilson, Bell Telephone Labs, in 1965. Thereafter it was measured with unprecedented precision by the COBE in 1989, characterizing the Planck spectral distribution of the CBR (J C Mather) and detecting its minute anisotropies (G Smoot). In 2003 the WMAP, NASA's satellite successor of the COBE, confirmed COBE's results, and gave an excellent quantitative estimate of the "age" of the universe as 13.7 ± 0.2 Gyrs, in support of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins.In the Third Edition of this book, almost coincident with the launch reports of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), includes recent work discussing evidence in favor of an open finite universe. A further discussion of the Heisenberg-Lemaitre time (Appendix D) takes into consideration that the cosmic expansion velocity at very early times is Ṙ(yHL)≫c and reviews in more detail the thermal history of the universe.

The 20th Century has been called the Century of Physics. It could be even more appropriate to call it the Century of Solid State Physics. All the technological developments which had changed the world by the end of the century had been based upon previous scientific developments in Solid State Physics.The Braggs, Debye, Bardeen, Landau were certainly at the forefront of all those revolutionary changes.

Scientific Cosmology is clearly one of the most active physics research fields at present, and likely to remain so in the near future. Shortly after the pioneering cosmological work of Einstein, Georges Lemaitre proposed a model which some years later to be known as the big-bang model. In the early fifties an alternative proposal, the so called steady-state (expansion at constant density) model, became the fashionable model in prominent academic circles. The discovery of the cosmic background microwave radiation (Penzias & Wilson, 1965) made the steady-state model almost untenable. A quarter of a century later the inflationary model was proposed, becoming extraordinarily popular almost immediately. For some it seemed to combine attractive features of both the steady-state and the big-bang models, by postulating a very early violent (constant density) expansion during a very tiny fraction of a second.The book makes use of the best and most recent observational data, from the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE, 1992) to the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP, 2003), to discuss the merits and demerits of inflationary cosmology for a general readership acquainted with the basic facts of scientific cosmology. A complete Glossary and a detailed Index help the reader to follow controversial topics, such as dark matter, dark energy, cosmic flatness and accelerated expansion.

This book begins by introducing the effective field approach, the simplest approach to phase transitions. It provides an intuitive approximation to the physics of such diverse phenomena as liquid-vapor transitions, ferromagnetism, superconductivity, order-disorder in alloys, ferroelectricity, superfluidity and ferroelasticity. The connection between the effective field approach and Landau's theory is stressed.The main coverage is devoted to specific applications of the effective field concept to ferroelectric systems, both hydrogen bonded ferroelectrics, like those in the TGS family, and oxide ferroelectrics, like pure and mixed perovskites.

This interesting book reviews WMAP's main results (2003) and discusses in detail how the accurate qualitative results for the “age” of the universe and the Hubble constant were anticipated in an article published five years before in Acta Cosmologica, Krakow. In the final chapter on “Cosmic Numbers”, it is shown that, as a result of the coincidence at decoupling time between atom formation and matter/radiation equality, a reasonable cosmic justification for the mass ratio of protons and electrons is obtained. /remove

This interesting book reviews WMAP's main results (2003) and discusses in detail how the accurate qualitative results for the “age” of the universe and the Hubble constant were anticipated in an article published five years before in Acta Cosmologica, Krakow. In the final chapter on “Cosmic Numbers”, it is shown that, as a result of the coincidence at decoupling time between atom formation and matter/radiation equality, a reasonable cosmic justification for the mass ratio of protons and electrons is obtained. /remove

World Population: Past, Present, & Future uses a multidisciplinary approach to investigate in depth on important aspects of the evolution of world population not well addressed previously. The authors from the Universidad Autonoma, Madrid (Spain), professors Julio A Gonzalo, Manuel Alfonseca, and Félix-Fernando Muñoz, point out that the recent pronounced growth in world population (accompanied by an even more pronounced growth in agricultural production) was due mainly to the increase of life expectancy and not to the (inexistent) growth in fertility rate. Using a "rate equations" approach for the first time, they describe population trends and forecast the possibility of steps up (or down) in population rather than the exponential growth predicted by UN demographers around 1985 and thereafter. This book provides a new perspective that our planet is not overpopulated and could, in fact, house a considerably larger population.

Beginning with the famous Olber's paradox, paradoxes such as the missing mass, dark energy, baryon to photon ratio and cosmic zero-point energy are examined in detail. The Heisenberg-Lemaitre's units, based on the total enormous but finite mass of the Universe, are introduced and rigorous solutions of Einstein's cosmological equations for an open Universe with cosmological constant are obtained. Energy conservation after the Big Bang is consistently required.This book discusses such paradoxes in depth with physical and logical content and historical perspective, and has not too technical content in order to serve a wide audience. In the second edition, the content is updated and new sections are added.

Beginning with the famous Olber's paradox, paradoxes such as the missing mass, dark energy, baryon to photon ratio and cosmic zero-point energy are examined in detail. The Heisenberg-Lemaitre's units, based on the total enormous but finite mass of the Universe, are introduced and rigorous solutions of Einstein's cosmological equations for an open Universe with cosmological constant are obtained. Energy conservation after the Big Bang is consistently required.This book discusses such paradoxes in depth with physical and logical content and historical perspective, and has not too technical content in order to serve a wide audience. In the second edition, the content is updated and new sections are added.

Beginning with the famous Olber's paradox, a number of cosmological paradoxes, such as the missing mass, dark energy, and the baryon-to-photon ratio, have been and are today the subject of many scientific controversies. The Big Bang model, anticipated by Lemaitre in 1927 and reformulated twenty years later by Gamow, Alpher and Herman, is one of the most spectacular successes in the entire history of physics. It remains today surrounded by considerable theoretical speculation without sufficient observational support.This book discusses such paradoxes in depth with physical and logical content and historical perspective, and has not too technical content in order to serve a wide audience.

Beginning with the famous Olber's paradox, a number of cosmological paradoxes, such as the missing mass, dark energy, and the baryon-to-photon ratio, have been and are today the subject of many scientific controversies. The Big Bang model, anticipated by Lemaitre in 1927 and reformulated twenty years later by Gamow, Alpher and Herman, is one of the most spectacular successes in the entire history of physics. It remains today surrounded by considerable theoretical speculation without sufficient observational support.This book discusses such paradoxes in depth with physical and logical content and historical perspective, and has not too technical content in order to serve a wide audience.

This book provides realistic answers to hotly debated scientific topics: Science is about quantitative aspects of natural realities (physical, chemical, biological) but it is the result of human intellectual inquiry and therefore not “per se” materialistic.This book, with contributions from experts in physics, cosmology, mathematics, engineering, biology and genetics, covers timely and relevant topics such as the origin of the universe, the origin of life on Earth, the origin of man (intelligent life) and the origin of science.