PROCEEDINGS OF NOBEL SYMPOSIUM - PHYSICS – serie

A geometric figure has chirality, or handedness, if its mirror image cannot be brought to coincide with itself. The concept of chirality was instrumental in establishing the tetrahedral valences of the carbon atom, and has continued to play a key role in chemistry and molecular biology ever since.The fact that living organisms use only one of two mirror isomers of such molecules as amino acids and sugars, that is, the question of the origin of homochirality of the molecular basis of life, remains an unsolved problem of the same dignity as the origin of dark matter and dark energy.The increasing importance of chirality and topology in condensed matter physics and chemistry, and the production of new states of matter in heavy-ion collisions, have brought the concept of chirality into physics and cosmology in a tangible way while at the same time expanded the physics/chemistry interface. The book is the first to address all aspects of chirality in a single volume.

This volume is mainly concerned with QED effects in few-electron systems; atomic structure in many-electron atomic systems; parity-nonconserving effects in atoms; and many-electron transfer reactions and state-selective electron capture.

This volume contains papers from the Nobel Symposium 91, held in Lysekil, Sweden, in August 1994, and presents talks on selected areas of atomic physics. Speakers include Hans Dehmelt and Norman Ramsey, Nobel prize winners in physics in 1989.

These proceedings from the 9th Nobel Symposium present papers on heterostructures in semiconductors. Subjects covered include nanofabricated three dimensional photonic crystals operating at optical wavelengths, and future applications of heterostructures.

Quantum mechanics is more than 70 years old and forms the basis of our description of phenomena at the atomic level. Still, its internal structure and many aspects of its interpretation have been discussed ever since its conception. It is only during the last 10-15 years that novel experimental techniques have allowed physicists to carry out tests of a type which the quantum theory pioneers only dreamt of — the so-called “Gedanken experiments”.The present book shows how such crucial tests have led to a deeper understanding of basic quantum concepts and processes. This field is now developing rapidly, with important consequences for such diverse applications as measurement technology and quantum-based information transfer and computing.

It is generally felt in the cosmology and particle astrophysics community that we have just entered an era which later can only be looked back upon as a golden age. Thanks to the rapid technical development, with powerful new telescopes and other detectors taken into operation at an impressive rate, and the accompanying advancement of theoretical ideas, the picture of the past, present and future Universe is getting ever clearer. Some of the most exciting new findings and expected future developments are discussed in this invaluable volume.The topics covered include the physics of the early Universe and ultra-high energy processes. Emphasis is also put on neutrino physics and astrophysics, with the evidence for non-zero neutrino masses emerging from both solar neutrinos and atmospheric neutrinos covered in great depth. Another field with interesting new results concerns the basic cosmological parameters, where both traditional methods and the potential of new ones, like deep supernova surveys and acoustic peak detections in the cosmic microwave background, are thoroughly discussed. Various aspects of the dark matter problem, such as gravitational lensing estimates of galaxy masses, cluster evolution and hot cluster electron distortions of the thermal microwave background spectrum, are also discussed, as are particle physics candidates of dark matter and methods to detect them. Cosmic rays of matter and antimatter are included as a topic, and so is the problem of the enigmatic dark energy of the vacuum.