Science And Culture Series - Physics – serie

The introduction of spin is believed to be a necessary tool if one wishes to quantize general relativity. Then the main problem is to see if the introduction of spin generalizing the general relativity from a geometric point of view, i.e. through the concept of torsion, can be experimentally verified.The reader can find in this book both theoretical and experimental arguments which show the necessity for the introduction of spin, and then of torsion, in gravity. In fact, torsion constitutes the more natural and simple way to introduce spin in general relativity. For that reason it is of fundamental importance to see if there are some experiences that indicate — if not directly, then at least indirectly — the presence of torsion. This book presents a discussion on experiments with a polarized-mass torsion pendulum, the search for galactic dark matter interacting with a spin pendulum, a description of a space-based method for determination of the gravitational constant and space-based measurements of spin in gravity, as well as a discussion on theoretical arguments, for instance the nature of torsion and nonmetricity, the viability of gravitational theories with spin-torsion and spin-spin interaction, many-dimensional gravitational theories with torsion, spinors on curved spaces, the spinors in real space-time, etc.We know that until now there has been no evidence for torsion, but this fact cannot prevent us from considering in some detail this implement of research that seems to be important from both a geometrical and a physical point of view.

This book provides an up-to-date understanding of the progress and current problems of the interplay of nonlocality in the classical theories of gravitation and quantum theory. These problems lie on the border between general relativity and quantum physics, including quantum gravity.

The book is aimed at assessing the capabilities of state-of-the-art optical techniques in elucidating the fundamental electronic and structural properties of semiconductor and metal surfaces, interfaces, thin layers, and layer structures, and assessing the usefulness of these techniques for optimization of high quality multilayer samples through feedback control during materials growth and processing. Particular emphasis is dedicated to the theory of nonlinear optics and to dynamical processes through the use of pump–probe techniques together with the search for new optical sources. Some new applications of Scanning Probe Microscopy to Material Science and biological samples, dried and in vivo, with the use of different laser sources are also presented. Materials of particular interest are silicon, semiconductor–metal interfaces, semiconductor and magnetic multi-layers and III-V compound semiconductors.

This volume stresses the necessity of image processing for future high energy physics detectors (indeed the signals — 1 megabyte of data or more, every 16 nanoseconds — will have 2D-spatial-topology-like images; only the processing/decision rates are much higher). The main issues presented are: new detectors, algorithms for tracking and pattern recognition, dedicated archi-tectures, benchmarking studies on commercially avaliable machines, mixed VLSI technologies, neural networks.

This book makes an assessment of the state of the art regarding a new technology, GaAs, which will eventually become vital to construction of the apparatus for high energy physics at future accelerators.

The papers in this volume provide an updated status of the last developments and current problems in string theory in connection with gravity and the physics at the Planck scale. This volume also contains excellent discussions on fundamental problems of quantum gravity and the physics at the Planck energy scale in the present-day context, irrespective of strings or any other models.

In this workshop, the super high energy and luminosity frontiers of subnuclear physics were actively investigated. A conceptual design of the highest energy (100+100 TeV) proton-proton collider — the Eloisatron — already exists. There are many reasons to believe that supersymmetry and its local version, supergravity, could be relevant in a fundamental theory of particle reactions. The minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model (MSSM) is today phenomenologically acceptable, theoretically motivated and calculable. The present and future colliders can play a crucial role in testing supersymmetry experimentally. The purpose of the workshop was therefore to review the main features of the MSSM as well as the possible non-minimal models and the issue of gauge coupling unification. Emphasis was given to theoretical and experimental results relevant to supersymmetric particle searches at present and future colliders.

The success of the standard model in explaining low energy (≈ 100GeV) physics within the framework of spontaneously broken Yang-Mills theory has given physicists the hope that the Einstein dream of a unified theory of fundamental interactions might be achieved using geometrical methods of local symmetry principles supplemented by consistency requirements such as renormalization, unitarity and, most crucially, compatibility with present low energy data.Merging these principles with the quantum-mechanical notions of spin and statistics led physicists further to develop new theories in the last fifteen years for which the gauge symmetry principle is extended to incorporate supersymmetry and relativistic extended objects – the most famous example being superstrings propagating in curved space-time and having supergravity as their effective field theory.The proceedings represent the latest highlights in the field reported on by active researchers working in this particular area in addition to discussions on future perspectives.

This volume describes the critical issues involved in scaling the technology of proton synchrotrons to operate at energies much larger than those of existing accelerators. Luminosity limitions and interdependence of machine characteristics are analyzed. The second section presents analyses of the detector technologies needed to utilize a hadron super collider at the highest energies and luminosities.

Major developments have taken place during the last few years in the study of the nuclear paradigm as a result of recent detector and accelerator developments, and of improved theoretical models.The active use of 4-π detectors to measure the gamma decay of excited nuclei has been instrumental in exploring the consequences of extremely high rotational frequencies and excitation energies in the nuclear structure. The identification of superdeformed bands, of limiting temperature for the detection of giant resonances, and of rotational damping, are conspicuous examples of this novel type of research. Studies of the disassembling of the nucleus have been systematically carried out, and the results interpreted in terms of transport models.At even higher temperatures one expects to have a completely new regime of hot dense matter, where the hadronic properties become strongly renormalized by the medium.Furthermore, studies of the properties of the nucleon as a many-body system of quarks and gluons displaying collective degrees of freedom which are damped by couplings to more complicated states, are providing a detailed and consistent picture of the nuclear paradigm.Important progress is also taking place in situations essentially opposite to the scenarios described above, namely in the study of correlations in nuclear matter at very low temperature and density.

During the last decades frontieres in various branches of physics have been investigated, especially for describing coherent effects, with very similar methodologies. In particular, the quantum-like formalism has recently received a great deal of attention for describing a number of "classical topics", such as charged particle beam optics and dynamics in accelerating machines, plasma physics, nonlinear optics, transmission lines, solid state physics. On the other hand, proper quantum models that have been applied to coherent correlated states, squeezed states, macroscopic quantum coherence in superconductivity, superradiance in condensed matter, stochastic mechanics, have also been recently developed in way fully similar to the one used for quantum-like models. The quantum-like approach seems, therefore, to form a common basis for understanding the observations in many diverse field of science.This volume collects very significant examples of these common methodologies that have been given by various quantum-like approaches for describing numerious physical scenarios in the above branches of physics.

This volume contains the Proceedings of "Quantum Gravity": a series of qualified lectures of most outstanding scientists given during the XIV Course of the International School of Cosmology and Gravitation. As usual of that School, the Course was conceived for researchers at different levels of scientific maturity ranging from post-doctorate research students to well established research workers: then in every lecture you can find an introduction where a review and analysis of the main mathematical, physical and epistemological difficulties encountered at the formulations of relativistic quantum theories are expounded, ranging from relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory in Minkowski and in curved space-time to the various canonical and covariant approaches to quantum gravity.

From its early beginnings at SLAC in the 1970's, the study of nucleon spin structure using polarized lepton beams and polarized nucleon targets has become increasingly important in nuclear and particle physics, with current experiments at several of the world's high energy and nuclear physics laboratories (CERN, DESY, SLAC and Jefferson Lab) and with enormous related theoretical studies. The understanding of the fascinating but complicated problem of nucleon spin structure has progressed substantially, but fundamental questions remain and it can be confidently predicted that future activity will be high.The Erice Course on The Spin Structure of the Nucleon covered both the experimental and theoretical aspects of the subject, and this volume includes the lectures given at the School. In many cases the lecture material has been extended and updated by the authors. In addition, several recent publications on experimental work have been added in an appendix.

The Eloisatron Project aims at the study of physics phenomena in hadron–hadron colliders at the limits of maximum energy and luminosity. QCD processes involving multiparticle final states have shown "universality features" in different production reactions once the "leading effects" are correctly accounted for. The study of these phenomena has three components: (i) at now-available energies; (ii) at future energies in the years to come; (iii) at extreme energies. The link between these components can be achieved by QCD and its developments.This volume reviews the recent status of QCD and discusses novel aspects of perturbative and non-perturbative approaches to different kinds of interactions. It contains various contributions on multihadron production (theory and phenomenology), perturbative QCD and pomeron physics. Also, the latest experimental results on pp, ep and e⁺e⁻ interactions are presented.

The quest for the revelation of the deepest composition of the structure of matter and the nature of the fundamental forces that bind them together is underway, using experiments with colliding hadron beams at the largest energy and luminosity that present and near-future accelerator technology can allow. This book gives the physics motivation of such a collider and discusses the benefits and requirements of the experimental program. Obviously the size of the collider is a major concern, and that is determined by the bending field which is possible to achieve in superconducting magnets; the book includes a discussion on the ultimate expected magnetic field that can be reached. There are also presentations of straw-man designs; in particular, the effects of the synchrotron radiation, which are quite significant at very large energies and large bending fields, are examined, with the possibility of taking advantage of them for the attainment of small beam size and thus luminosity. In addition, detector issues are discussed, especially in relation to the large expected background, the total number of events, and the difficulties of gathering and selecting relevant events. Finally, there is a discussion on the social and political implications of such a project.

The last few years have seen great progress in the understanding of nuclei far from stability, i.e. nuclei with a composition that differs radically from that of the stable nuclei that we encounter in Nature. It has become clear that the study of exotic nuclear species reveals many new phenomena, which may make us go back, armed with new insight, to more familiar nuclear systems. The proceedings at the 4th course of the International School of Heavy Ion Physics — Exotic Nuclei, containing the lectures and seminars by world specialists in the field, cover some of the central themes of the physics of exotic nuclei which lie at the forefront of nuclear research.

This book concerns the latest development of detectors that will be used in future particle physics experiments. Reviews of various forthcoming experiments are presented, with emphasis on the vital performance of the detector elements. In addition, the technological aspects of HPDs, RPCs, CSCs, MSGCs, GEMs, RICHs, DIRCs and a host of other detectors are covered in detail.

The ELOISATRON (ELN) Project aims at a future proton supercollider with 100–500 TeV energy per beam and 1034–1036 cm–2s–1 luminosity. While the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being implemented at CERN, it is very timely to study the feasibility of the next generation of hadron colliders at the extreme limits of energy and luminosity. In this respect, the achievement of extremely high magnetic fields and the production of accelerating rf cavities with very low losses are a crucial point in the actual construction design of such a collider. The search for superconducting materials with suitable properties to be used in this field has gained a new impulse after the discovery of the so-called high temperature superconducting compounds (HTSCs) with superconducting critical temperatures higher than 100 K. Besides the critical temperatures, the transport performances of this class of compounds are still very far from allowing applications in extremely high energy colliders. On the other hand, in the last few years, the technological and scientific improvements obtained for both the HTSCs and the conventional superconducting materials are very promising.This book reviews the recent status of R&D on the rising generation of superconducting materials for accelerator magnets and cavities, and discusses novel aspects and ideas in this domain.

The proceedings of DIS 2001 present the most updated status of deep inelastic scattering (DIS) physics. Topics like structure function measurements and phenomenology, QCD studies in DIS and photoproduction, spin physics and diffractive interactions are reviewed in detail, with emphasis on those studies that push the test of QCD and the Standard Model to the limits of their present range of validity, towards both the very high and the very low four-momentum transfers in the lepton-proton scattering. Moreover, this workshop coincided with the transition between the first period of experimentation at the HERA ep collider at DESY and the start of the updated HERA II operation — allowing a review of what has been learned up to now and a discussion on the main future directions of research in this field.

This book constitutes the proceedings of a workshop which originated from a discussion with Professor A Zichichi in March 2001. The purpose of the meeting was to celebrate two developments at Brookhaven that, in both cases, are the outcome of more than a decade of preparation: the new muon g-2 measurement and the flood of data that started pouring out of RHIC. Bringing together people from these very different fields was an interesting challenge. But, at the time, when a small community of heavy ion physicists was beginning to define a program of electromagnetic interactions at RHIC and LHC, it seemed logical. The result is the white paper “Hot Topics in Ultra-peripheral Collisions”.On Fermi's centennial, his original paper, developing for the first time the equivalent photon approximation, seemed to merit renewed attention. The paper has been translated into English from the Italian and included in the proceedings.

This book assesses the capabilities of state-of-the-art optical techniques in elucidating the fundamental electronic and structural properties of semiconductor and metal surfaces, interfaces, thin layers, and layer structures. It also examines the usefulness of these techniques for optimization of high quality multilayer samples through feedback control during materials growth and processing. Emphasis is given to dynamical processes through the use of pump–probe techniques, together with the search for new optical sources. Some new applications of scanning probe microscopy to materials science and biological samples (dried and in vivo) with the use of different laser sources are also presented.

The possible upgrade of LHC or a future generation of colliders at the extreme limits of energy and luminosity will require detectors based on very advanced technological solutions to fully exploit the physics opportunities offered. Major steps must be taken to design and realize devices that are able not only to handle very high rates but also to cope with the very harsh radiation environment without suffering any performance degradation.This book reviews the present status, current limits and recent developments in detection techniques and related aspects (simulation, signal acquisition, tracking, particle identification, etc.). Novel ideas in this domain are discussed with emphasis on the directions in which improvements in proven techniques are desired.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in:• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings® (ISTP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)• CC Proceedings — Engineering & Physical Sciences

The Highly Specialized Seminar on “Symmetries in Nuclear Structure”, held in Erice, Italy, in March 2003, celebrated the career and the remarkable achievements of Francesco Iachello, on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Since the development of the interacting boson model in the early 1970s, the ideas of Iachello have provided a variety of frameworks for understanding collective behaviour in nuclear structure, founded on the concepts of dynamical symmetries and spectrum-generating algebras. The original ideas, which were developed for the description of atomic nuclei, have now been successfully extended to cover spectroscopic behaviour in other fields, such as molecular or hadronic spectra. More recently, the suggestion by Iachello of critical point symmetries to treat nuclei in shape/phase transitional regions has opened an exciting new front for both theoreticians and experimentalists.The talks presented at the meeting covered many of the most active forefront areas of nuclear structure as well as other fields where ideas of symmetries are being explored. Topics in nuclear structure included extensive discussions on dynamical symmetries, critical point symmetries, phase transitions, statistical properties of nuclei, supersymmetry, mixed symmetry states, shears bands, pairing and clustering in nuclei, shape coexistence, exotic nuclei, dipole modes, and astrophysics, among others. In addition, important sessions focused on talks by European laboratory directors (or their representatives) outlining prospects for nuclear structure, and the application of symmetry ideas to molecular phenomena. Finally, a special lecture by Nobel laureate Alex Mueller, on s and d wave symmetry in superconductors, presented a unique insight into an allied field.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in:• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings® (ISTP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)• CC Proceedings — Engineering & Physical Sciences

A broad introduction and overview of current interdisciplinary studies on complexity, this volume is an ideal starting point for scientists and graduate students who wish to enter the field. The book features a diverse collection of the latest research work not found in a single volume elsewhere.Among the highly regarded contributors to the volume are the 2004 Boltzmann medalists E G D Cohen and H E Stanley; G Parisi, Boltzmann medalist in 1992 and Dirac medalist in 1999; and numerous internationally renowned experts, such as S Abe, F T Arecchi, J-P Bouchaud, A Coniglio, W Ebeling, P Grigolini, R Mantegna, M Paczuski, A Robledo, L Pietronero, A Vespignani, and T Vicsek.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 8th Epioptics Workshop, held at the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture, Erice, Sicily. The book assesses the capabilities of state-of-the-art optical techniques in elucidating the fundamental electronic and structural properties of semiconductor and metal surfaces, interfaces, thin layers, and layer structures. The contributions consider the usefulness of these techniques for optimization of high quality multilayer samples through feedback control during materials growth and processing. Particular emphasis is placed on the theory of non-linear optics and on dynamical processes through the use of pump-probe techniques together with the search for new optical sources. Some new applications of Scanning Near-field Optical Microscopy to material science and biological samples, dried and in vivo, with the use of different laser sources are also included.

These proceedings comprise cutting-edge contributions by researchers at the frontiers of beam physics, free-electron-based light sources, and advanced accelerators. It represents a snap-shot of activity in these fields at a critical historical juncture, where rapid experimental progress is being reported, and new facilities such as X-ray free-electron lasers are under construction. The volume features invited contributions from leading researchers from the international beam physics community that summarize the state-of-the-art research in individual topics, as well as timely contributions from participants that arose during the workshop itself.

This special volume contains the proceedings of the 9th Epioptics Workshop, held at the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture, Erice, Sicily, from July 20 to 26, 2006. The workshop was the 9th in the Epioptics series and the 39th of the International School of Solid State Physics.The workshop was aimed at assessing the capabilities of state-of-the-art optical techniques in elucidating the fundamental electronic and structural properties of semiconductor and metal surfaces, interfaces, thin layers, and layer structures, and at assessing the usefulness of these techniques for optimization of high-quality multilayer samples through feedback control during materials growth and processing. Particular emphasis is dedicated to the theory of non-linear optics and to dynamical processes through the use of pump-probe techniques together with the search for new optical sources. Some new applications of scanning probe microscopy to material science and biological samples, dried and in vivo, with the use of different laser sources are also presented.

The book “Channeling 2008”, Charged and Neutral Particles Channeling Phenomena, is formed by the same title conference contributions. This volume includes papers by leading researchers from different world centers. Their recent results on the coherent phenomena of charged and neutral particles propagating through the structures of various sizes and periodicities are included here, along with historical reviews by pioneers of coherent bremsstrahlung and channeling radiation as well as crystal channeling collimation.