Thanks to Einstein's relativity theories, our notions of space and time underwent profound revisions about a 100 years ago. The resulting interplay between geometry and physics has dominated all of fundamental physics since then. This volume contains contributions from leading researchers, worldwide, who have thought deeply about the nature and consequences of this interplay. The articles take a long-range view of the subject and distill the most important advances in broad terms, making them easily accessible to non-specialists. The first part is devoted to a summary of how relativity theories were born (J Stachel). The second part discusses the most dramatic ramifications of general relativity, such as black holes (P Chrusciel and R Price), space-time singularities (H Nicolai and A Rendall), gravitational waves (P Laguna and P Saulson), the large scale structure of the cosmos (T Padmanabhan); experimental status of this theory (C Will) as well as its practical application to the GPS system (N Ashby). The last part looks beyond Einstein and provides glimpses into what is in store for us in the 21st century. Contributions here include summaries of radical changes in the notions of space and time that are emerging from quantum field theory in curved space-times (Ford), string theory (T Banks), loop quantum gravity (A Ashtekar), quantum cosmology (M Bojowald), discrete approaches (Dowker, Gambini and Pullin) and twistor theory (R Penrose).

Divided into three parts, this volume focuses on a summary of how relativity theories were born. It also discusses the ramifications of general relativity, such as black holes, space-time singularities, gravitational waves, the large scale structure of the cosmos, and more. It includes summaries of radical changes in the notions of space and time.

Already Einstein could never see quantum mechanics as a complete theory. Nowadays, many researchers, including 't Hooft, view quantum mechanics as a statistical description of some underlying reality. The workshop Beyond the Quantum, organized in Spring 2006 at the Lorentz Center in Leiden, The Netherlands, was one of the first meetings completely devoted to physics that may need an explanation beyond quantum mechanics. A broad variety of subjects was covered. The present book reflects this. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: The Mathematical Basis for Deterministic Quantum Mechanics (267 KB). Contents: Introductions: The Mathematical Basis for Deterministic Quantum Mechanics (G 't Hooft); What Did We Learn from Quantum Gravity? (A Ashtekar); BoseOCoEinstein Condensates and EPR Quantum Non-Locality (F Lalo1/2); The Quantum Measurement Process: Lessons from an Exactly Solvable Model (A E Allahverdyan et al.); Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Information: POVMs: A Small but Important Step Beyond Standard Quantum Mechanics (W M de Muynck); State Reduction by Measurements with a Null Result (G Nienhuis); Solving Open Questions in the BoseOCoEinstein Condensation of an Ideal Gas via a Hybrid Mixture of Laser and Statistical Physics (M Kim et al.); Long Distance Correlations and Bell Inequalities: Fair Sampling vs No-Signalling Principle in EPR Experiments (G Adenier & A Yu Khrennikov); Mathematical Foundations: Where the Mathematical Structure of Quantum Mechanics Comes From (G M D'Ariano); Phase Space Description of Quantum Mechanics and Non-Commutative Geometry: Wigner-Moyal and Bohm in a Wider Context (B J Hiley); Quantum Mechanics as Simple Algorithm for Approximation of Classical Integrals (A Yu Khrennikov); Stochastic Electrodynamics: Some Quantum Experiments from the Point of View of Stochastic Electrodynamics (V apicka et al.); Models for the Electron: Rotating Hopf-Kinks: Oscillators in the Sense of de Broglie (U Enz); The Electron and the Neutrino as Solitos in Classical Electromagnetism (Th M Nieuwenhuizen); Philosophical Considerations; Round Table; and other papers. Readership: Postgraduates and researchers in quantum physics."

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "100 Years of Chronogeometrodynamics: the Status of the Einstein's Theory of Gravitation in Its Centennial Year" that was published in Universe

Celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the 1909 publication of Minkowski’s seminal paper "Space and Time", this volume includes a fresh translation as well as the original in German, and a number of contributed papers on the still-controversial subject.

'The book is an engaging and influential collection of significant contributions from an assembly of world expert leaders and pioneers from different fields, working at the interface between topology and physics or applications of topology to physical systems … The book explores many interesting and novel topics that lie at the intersection between gravity, quantum fields, condensed matter, physical cosmology and topology … A rich, well-organized, and comprehensive overview of remarkable and insightful connections between physics and topology is here made available to the physics reader.'Contemporary PhysicsSince its birth in Poincaré's seminal 1894 'Analysis Situs', topology has become a cornerstone of mathematics. As with all beautiful mathematical concepts, topology inevitably — resonating with that Wignerian principle of the effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences — finds its prominent role in physics. From Chern-Simons theory to topological quantum field theory, from knot invariants to Calabi-Yau compactification in string theory, from spacetime topology in cosmology to the recent Nobel Prize winning work on topological insulators, the interactions between topology and physics have been a triumph over the past few decades.In this eponymous volume, we are honoured to have contributions from an assembly of grand masters of the field, guiding us with their world-renowned expertise on the subject of the interplay between 'Topology' and 'Physics'. Beginning with a preface by Chen Ning Yang on his recollections of the early days, we proceed to a novel view of nuclei from the perspective of complex geometry by Sir Michael Atiyah and Nick Manton, followed by an entrée toward recent developments in two-dimensional gravity and intersection theory on the moduli space of Riemann surfaces by Robbert Dijkgraaf and Edward Witten; a study of Majorana fermions and relations to the Braid group by Louis H Kauffman; a pioneering investigation on arithmetic gauge theory by Minhyong Kim; an anecdote-enriched review of singularity theorems in black-hole physics by Sir Roger Penrose; an adventure beyond anyons by Zhenghan Wang; an aperçu on topological insulators from first-principle calculations by Haijun Zhang and Shou-Cheng Zhang; finishing with synopsis on quantum information theory as one of the four revolutions in physics and the second quantum revolution by Xiao-Gang Wen. We hope that this book will serve to inspire the research community.

This volume explores the inadequacies of the two standard conceptions of space or spacetime, substantivalism and relationism, and in the process, proposes a new historical interpretation of these physical theories. This book also examines and develops alternative ontological conceptions of space, and explores additional historical elements of seventeenth century theories and other metaphysical themes. The author first discusses the two main opposing theories of the ontology of space. One, known as substantivalism, proposes space to be an entity that can exist independently of material things. The other, relationism, contends that space is a relation among material things. Readers will learn about specific problems with this dichotomy. First, Newton and Leibniz are often upheld as the retrospective forerunners of substantivalism and relationism. But, their work often contradicts the central tenets of these views. Second, these theories have proven problematic when transferred to a modern setting, especially with regards to general relativity and the recent quantum gravity hypotheses. The author details an alternative set of concepts that address these problems. The author also develops a new classificational system that provides a more accurate taxonomy for the elements of all spatial ontologies. This classification obtains successful analogies between Newton, Leibniz, and other natural philosophers with contemporary physical theories.

Dedicated to the centennial anniversary of Minkowski's discovery of spacetime, this volume contains papers, most presented at the Third International Conference on the Nature and Ontology of Spacetime, that address some of the deepest questions in physics.

This thesis explores the connection between gravity and thermodynamics and provides a unification scheme that opens up new directions of exploration. Further elaborating on the Hawking effect and the possibility of singularity avoidance, the author not only discusses the information loss paradox at a broader level but also provides a possible solution to it. As the final frontier, it describes some novel effects arising from the microscopic structure of spacetime. Taken as a whole, the thesis addresses three major research areas in gravitational physics: it starts with classical gravity, proceeds to the black hole information loss paradox, and closes with Planck scale physics. The thesis is written in a lucid and pedagogical style, with an introduction accessible to researchers from other branches of physics and a d iscussion presenting open questions and future directions, which will benefit and hopefully inspire next-generation researchers.

This is the first comprehensive book on the philosophy of time. Leading philosophers discuss the metaphysics of time, our experience and representation of time, the role of time in ethics and action, and philosophical issues in the sciences of time, especially quantum mechanics and relativity theory.