Points, Lines, and Surfaces at Criticality

Points, Lines, and Surfaces at Criticality
Author: Edoardo Lauria
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2019-07-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030257304

This thesis offers a fascinating journey through various non-perturbative aspects of Conformal Theories, in particular focusing on the Conformal Bootstrap Programme and its extensions to theories with various degrees of symmetry. Because of the preeminent role of Conformal Theories in Nature, as well as the great generality of the results here obtained, this analysis directly applies to many different areas of research. The content of this thesis is certainly relevant for the physics community as a whole and this relevance is well motivated and discussed along the various chapters of this work. The work is self-contained and starts with an original introduction to conformal theories, defects in such theories and how they lead to constraints on data and an extension of the bootstrap programme. This situation is often realized by critical systems with impurities, topological insulators, or – in the high-energy context – by Wilson and 't Hooft operators. The thesis continues with original research results of the author, including supersymmetric extensions. These results may be relevant non only in the high energy physics context - where supersymmetry is required for the theory to be consistent - but also for condensed matter systems that enjoy supersymmetry emergence at long distances.

Complexity and Criticality

Complexity and Criticality
Author: Kim Christensen
Publisher: Imperial College Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2005
Genre: Science
ISBN: 186094504X

This book provides a challenging and stimulating introduction to the contemporary topics of complexity and criticality, and explores their common basis of scale invariance, a central unifying theme of the book.Criticality refers to the behaviour of extended systems at a phase transition where scale invariance prevails. The many constituent microscopic parts bring about macroscopic phenomena that cannot be understood by considering a single part alone. The phenomenology of phase transitions is introduced by considering percolation, a simple model with a purely geometrical phase transition, thus enabling the reader to become intuitively familiar with concepts such as scale invariance and renormalisation. The Ising model is then introduced, which captures a thermodynamic phase transition from a disordered to an ordered system as the temperature is lowered in zero external field. By emphasising analogies between percolation and the Ising model, the reader's intuition of phase transitions is developed so that the underlying theoretical formalism may be appreciated fully. These equilibrium systems undergo a phase transition only if an external agent finely tunes certain external parameters to particular values.Besides fractals and phase transitions, there are many examples in Nature of the emergence of such complex behaviour in slowly driven non-equilibrium systems: earthquakes in seismic systems, avalanches in granular media and rainfall in the atmosphere. A class of non-equilibrium systems, not constrained by having to tune external parameters to obtain critical behaviour, is addressed in the framework of simple models, revealing that the repeated application of simple rules may spontaneously give rise to emergent complex behaviour not encoded in the rules themselves. The common basis of complexity and criticality is identified and applied to a range of non-equilibrium systems. Finally, the reader is invited to speculate whether self-organisation in non-equilibrium systems might be a unifying concept for disparate fields such as statistical mechanics, geophysics and atmospheric physics.Visit http: //www.complexityandcriticality.com for animations for the models in the book (available for Windows and Linux), solutions to exercises, as well as a list with corrections.

Quarks, Leptons, and Their Constituents

Quarks, Leptons, and Their Constituents
Author: Antonino Zichichi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 611
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1461308895

From 5 to 15 August 1984, a group of 79 physicists from 61 laboratories in 26 countries met in Erice for the 22nd Course of the International School of Subnuclear Physics. The countries represented were Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, People's Republic of China, Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America. The School was sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Public Education (MPI), the Italian Ministry of Scientific and Technologi cal Research (MRST), the Regional Sicilian Government (ERS), and the Weizmann Institute of Science. The programme of the School was devoted to a review of the most significant results in theoretical and experimental research work on the interactions between what we believe today are the point like constituents of the world: quarks and leptons. It should however not be forgotten that many problems are still to be understood: especially in the forefront of the correla tion between quarks and leptons. This game started in 1966 with the proposal for "leptonic quarks" and went on with "preons" and "rishons" just to quote the most famous attempts to unify these two worlds.

Introduction to Surface Magnetism

Introduction to Surface Magnetism
Author: Takahito Kaneyoshi
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 190
Release: 1990-12-13
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780849366871

This book has been designed as an introductory text to surface magnetism for physics and material science students. General topics discussed include the physical characteristics of magnetically ordered systems, the structural aspects of surfaces, magnetic surfaces, the Weiss molecular field and other effective field theories, the scaling concept and scaling relations, ferro- and ferrimagnetism, and spin waves. Introduction to Surface Magnetism includes 85 figures and 6 tables to help summarize information presented in the book.

Heterogeneous Spatial Data

Heterogeneous Spatial Data
Author: Giuseppe Patanè
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2022-05-31
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 303102589X

New data acquisition techniques are emerging and are providing fast and efficient means for multidimensional spatial data collection. Airborne LIDAR surveys, SAR satellites, stereo-photogrammetry and mobile mapping systems are increasingly used for the digital reconstruction of the environment. All these systems provide extremely high volumes of raw data, often enriched with other sensor data (e.g., beam intensity). Improving methods to process and visually analyze this massive amount of geospatial and user-generated data is crucial to increase the efficiency of organizations and to better manage societal challenges. Within this context, this book proposes an up-to-date view of computational methods and tools for spatio-temporal data fusion, multivariate surface generation, and feature extraction, along with their main applications for surface approximation and rainfall analysis. The book is intended to attract interest from different fields, such as computer vision, computer graphics, geomatics, and remote sensing, working on the common goal of processing 3D data. To this end, it presents and compares methods that process and analyze the massive amount of geospatial data in order to support better management of societal challenges through more timely and better decision making, independent of a specific data modeling paradigm (e.g., 2D vector data, regular grids or 3D point clouds). We also show how current research is developing from the traditional layered approach, adopted by most GIS softwares, to intelligent methods for integrating existing data sets that might contain important information on a geographical area and environmental phenomenon. These services combine traditional map-oriented visualization with fully 3D visual decision support methods and exploit semantics-oriented information (e.g., a-priori knowledge, annotations, segmentations) when processing, merging, and integrating big pre-existing data sets.

Excluded Volume Effects in Polymer Solutions

Excluded Volume Effects in Polymer Solutions
Author: Lothar Schäfer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 554
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 364260093X

Schäfer gives a concise overview of the static equilibrium properties of polymer solutions. In the first part diagrammatic perturbation theory is derived from scratch. The second part illustrates the basic ideas of the renormalization group (RG). The crucial role of dilation invariance is stressed. The more efficient method of dimensional regularization and minimal subtractions is worked out in part three. The fourth part contains a unified evaluation of the theory to the one loop level. All the important experimental quantities are discussed in detail, and the results are compared extensively to experiment. Empirical methods of data analysis are critically discussed. The final (fifth) part is devoted to extensions of theory. The first three parts of this book may serve as the basis of a course. Parts four and five are hoped to be useful for detailed quantitative evaluations of experiments.

Critical Moments During Competition

Critical Moments During Competition
Author: Roland A. Carlstedt
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2004-09-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1135432260

This book presents first-time research findings and new empirically based perspectives and applications in sport psychology.Highly provocative data derived from the largest single study ever on athletes is used to advance an original model of peak performance centering on a clearly emerging athlete's profile. Central to the book is the Theory of Critical Moments, which proposes that mental factors are most crucial during specifically delineated psychologically significant periods of competition and helps explain when and why intrusive cognitions influence performance.

Proceedings of the Gibbs Symposium

Proceedings of the Gibbs Symposium
Author: D. G. Caldi
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
Total Pages: 342
Release: 1990-11-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780821896716

This volume, a joint publication with the American Institute of Physics, contains the proceedings of a symposium honoring the memory of Josiah Willard Gibbs, one of the giants of theoretical physics. Three articles provide perspectives on Gibbs, the man, and on the place his work occupies in the history of science. There are also contributions from leading scientists on statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, geophysics, number theory, general relativity, and economics.

The Casimir Effect In Critical Systems

The Casimir Effect In Critical Systems
Author: Michael Krech
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 270
Release: 1994-07-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9814501778

The well-known Casimir effect has a direct analogue in systems near critical or multicritical points. Critical fluctuations in systems confined to finite geometries lead to attractive or repulsive forces between system boundaries. These forces influence the formation of wetting layers of liquid 4He or binary liquid mixtures near critical points in these fluids. With the aid of recently developed versions of the atomic force microscope, these forces appear to be directly measurable. The book contains an introduction to the physics of critical phenomena and reviews the most recent developments in the theory of finite-size scaling. A detailed discussion of the Casimir effect and related questions follows. The analysis of quantitative effects on the specific heat of critical films, the formation of wetting layers, and force measurements finish the presentation. This is perhaps the first book on the critical Casimir effect.