Physics

This book presents beam physics using a unified approach, emphasizing basic concepts and analysis methods. While many existing resources in beams and accelerators are specialized to aid the professional practitioner, this text anticipates the needs of physics students. The central concepts underpinning the physics of accelerators, charged particle, and photon beams are built up from familiar, intertwining components, such as electromagnetism, relativity, and Hamiltonian dynamics. These components are woven into an illustrative set of examples that allow investigation of a variety of physical scenarios. With these tools, single particle dynamics in linear accelerators are discussed, with general methods that are naturally extended to circular accelerators. Beyond single particle dynamics, the proliferation of commonly used beam descriptions are surveyed and compared. These methods provide a powerful connection between the classical charged particle beams, and beams based on coherent waves — laser beams. Aspects of experimental techniques are introduced. Numerous exercises, and examples drawn from devices such as synchrotrons and free-electron lasers, are included to illustrate relevant physical principles.

This book deals with neutrino physics and astrophysics — a field in which some of the most exciting recent developments in particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology took place. The book discusses all the topics vital to the understanding of the nature of neutrinos such as what they are, how to describe them, how they behave in nature, and the roles that neutrinos play in shaping our universe. The book provides discussions, both experimental and theoretical, with relevant mathematical details, on neutrino oscillations, extra-terrestrial as well as terrestrial neutrinos and the relic neutrinos. It also discusses many implications of current experimental data on reactor, accelerator, atmospheric, solar, and supernova neutrinos with future perspectives. The book starts with an introduction to field theory and gauge theory, with helpful appendices, and it also provides pedagogical, but sufficiently detailed, reviews of supernova physics and cosmology, in particular the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

This book is a systematic introduction to the new and rapidly evolving field of patterns in granular materials. Granular matter is usually defined as a collection of discrete macroscopic solid particles (grains) with a typical size large enough that thermal fluctuations are negligible. Despite this seeming simplicity, properties of granular materials set them apart from conventional solids, liquids, and gases due to the dissipative and highly nonlinear nature of forces among grains. The last decade has seen an explosion of interest to nonequilibrium phenomena in granular matter among physicists, both on experimental and theoretical sides. Among these phenomena, one of the most intriguing is the ability of granular matter upon mechanical excitation to form highly ordered patterns of collective motion, such as ripples, avalanches, waves, or bands of segregated materials. This book combines a review of experiments with exposition of theoretical concepts and models introduced to understand the mechanisms of pattern formation in granular materials. The unique feature of this book is a strong effort to extend concepts and ideas developed in granular physics beyond the traditionally defined boundaries of the granular physics towards emergent fields, especially in biology, such as cytoskeleton dynamics, molecular motors transport, ordering of cells and other active (self-propelled) particles, dynamic self-assembly, etc.

This book deals with all aspects of gravitational-wave physics, both theoretical and experimental. This first volume deals with gravitational wave (GW) theory and experiments. Part I discusses the theory of GWs, re-deriving afresh and in a coherent way all the results presented. Both the geometrical and the field-theoretical approach to general relativity are discussed. The generation of GWs is discussed first in linearized theory (including the general multipole expansion) and then within the post-Newtonian formalism. Many important calculations (inspiral of compact binaries, GW emission by rotating or precessing bodies, infall into black holes, etc.) are presented. The observation of GWs emission from the change in the orbital period of binary pulsar, such as the Hulse-Taylor pulsar and the double pulsar, is also explained, and the pulsar timing formula is derived. Part II discusses the principles of GW experiments, going into the detail of the functioning of both interferometers and resonant-mass detectors. One chapter is devoted to the data analysis techniques relevant for GW experiments.

The condensed phases of helium three provide an exciting laboratory for many fundamental questions in condensed matter physics. Due to its light mass and weak interatomic potential, the condensed phases of helium display quantum effects more dramatically than any other atomic system. Intuition based on classical experience is often misleading in these phases: the solid phase for instance is less ordered at low temperature than the liquid phase. The book covers all the low temperature properties of helium three as liquid, superfluid, and solid. It provides an introduction to the extensive literature on helium three from the point of view of an experimentalist, and includes the analogy of its properties with the cosmological ‘big bang’.

This book covers both practical and theoretical aspects of atomic resolution transmission electron microscopy. The discovery of the carbon nanotube, the three-dimensional imaging of the ribosome, and the imaging of a single foreign atom inside a thin crystal by energy-filtered transmission electron microscopy have all demonstrated the immense power of this technique. The recent development of aberration-correction devices has brought the spatial resolution of the method below one Angstrom. The emphasis throughout is on a clear presentation of fundamental concepts, and practical advice. The chapters review simple electron optics, phase contrast theory, coherence theory, and imaging theory for thin crystals. The multiple scattering theory is given in full, and the relationship between the various formulations (Bloch-wave, multislice, scattering matrix, Howie–Whelan equations, phase grating etc) is explained. Applications in biology and materials science are covered, with discussions of radiation damage, sample preparation, image processing and super-resolution, electron holography, and aberration correction. The theory of high-angle annular dark field Z-contrast imaging by scanning transmission electron microscopy is given in full. Additional chapters are devoted to electron sources and detectors, fault diagnosis, experimental methods and associated techniques such as channelling effects in X-ray microanalysis, microdiffraction, cathodoluminescence, environmental microscopy and electron energy-loss spectroscopy.

This book reviews both the historical observations of supernovae (SNe) seen in our Galaxy over the last two millennia — and recorded in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea) as ‘guest stars’, Europe and the Arab dominions — together with modern observations of the remnants of these supernovae. Introductory chapters provide background information on the historical observations and our modern understanding of supernovae and novae, and of supernova remnants (SNRs) and pulsars. One chapter discusses the young SNR Cassiopeia A, and the proposed sighting of its SN in AD 1680 by Flamsteed. Subsequent chapters discuss the historical observations of the well-defined historical SNe and modern observations of their remnants. These chapters cover Kepler's SN of AD 1604, Tycho's SN of AD 1572, the SN of AD 1181, the SN of AD 1054 that produced the well-known Crab Nebula; and the especially bright SN of AD 1006. Earlier probable and possible supernovae of the preceding millennium chronicled in China are also discussed, along with their possible remnants. Other less certain observations of SNe, and the future potential for additional historical observations, are briefly discussed. This book also includes, as an appendix, a catalogue of over two hundred known Galactic SNRs.

Holography exploded on the scientific world in 1964, but its slow fuse had been burning much longer. Over the next four decades, the echoes of that explosion reached scientists, engineers, artists, and popular culture. Emerging from classified military research, holography evolved to represent the power of post-war physics, an aesthetic union of art and science, the countercultural meanderings of holism, a cottage industry for waves of would-be entrepreneurs, and a fertile plot device for science fiction. New working cultures sprang up to mutate holography, redefining its products, reshaping its audiences, and re-conceiving its applications. The outcomes included ever more sublime holograms and exquisitely sensitive measuring techniques — but also priority disputes, prurience, and poisonous business rivalries. New subjects cross intellectual borders, and so do their explanations. This book draws on the history and philosophy of science and technology, social studies, politics, and cultural history to trace the trajectory of holography. The result is an in-depth account of how new science emerges. Based on unprecedented interviews with pioneer holographers and extensive archival research, it reveals how science, technology, art, and wider culture are entwined in the modern world.

The introduction in antiquity of the moving sphere as a model for understanding the celestial phenomena provided the momentum for making celestial globes and mapping the stars. The globe is the most deceptive of all early scientific instruments. Invented by the Greeks as a scientific instrument imitating the phenomena such as the rising of the setting of the stars and precession, it became soon used in antiquity in education to circumvent the complicated mathematics of the sphere, and by artists for decorative purposes symbolising the world at large. The globe was also the starting-point for the construction of maps in antiquity. Although no antique celestial maps have survived medieval copies of them are included in illustrated astronomical books such as the Latin translation of Aratus's Phaenomena describing how the constellations are located with respect to each other. The cultural impact of globes is echoed in the oldest known ceiling painting of the celestial sky in the bath house of Quṣayr ^cAmra built in the first half of the eighth century. The complete absence of celestial maps other than the retes of astrolabes in the Islamic tradition is a puzzle that needs further study. The construction of globes varied greatly as it passed from Greece to the Arabic and Medieval European cultures. The constellation design of Islamic globes stands out from later western globes made in the early fifteenth century by the way constellations are drawn on a sphere. The first celestial maps in the mathematical tradition also emerged in the early fifteenth century foreshadowing the modern period in celestial cartography in the Western World.

Aperiodic crystals are crystalline materials with atomic structures that lack translational symmetry. This book gives a comprehensive account of the superspace theory for the description of the crystal structures, and symmetries of incommensurately modulated crystals and composite crystals. It also gives a brief introduction to quasicrystals, thus providing the necessary background for understanding the distinctive features of aperiodic crystals, and it provides the tools for the application of quantitative methods from the realms of crystallography, solid state chemistry, and solid state physics to aperiodic crystal structures. The second half of the book is devoted to crystallographic methods of structural analysis of incommensurate crystals. Thorough accounts are given of the diffraction by incommensurate crystals, the choice of parameters in structure refinements, and the use of superspace in analysing crystal structures. The presentation of methods of structure determination includes direct methods, Fourier methods, Patterson function methods, the maximum entropy method (MEM), and charge flipping. So-called t-plots are introduced as a versatile method for the crystal chemical analysis of incommensurately modulated structures and composite crystals.