Proceedings Of Nobel Symposium - Physics - Böcker

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.

Quantum chaos is becoming a very wide field that ranges from experiments to theoretical physics and purely mathematical issues. In view of this grand span, Nobel Symposium 116 focused on experiments and theory, and attempted to encourage interplay between them. There was emphasis on the interdisciplinary character of the subject, involving a broad range of subjects in physics, including condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, atomic physics and elementary particle physics. The physics involved in quantum chaos has much in common with acoustics, microwaves, optics, etc., and therefore the symposium also covered aspects of wave chaos in this broader sense. The program was structured according to the following areas: manifestations of classical chaos in quantum systems; transport phenomena; quantal spectra in terms of periodic orbits; semiclassical and random matrix approaches; quantum chaos in interacting systems; chaos and tunneling; wave-dynamic chaos. This important book constitutes the proceedings of the symposium.