This textbook is mainly for physics students at the advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate levels, especially those with a theoretical inclination. Its chief purpose is to give a systematic introduction to the main ingredients of the fundamentals of quantum theory, with special emphasis on those aspects of group theory (spacetime and permutational symmetries and group representations) and differential geometry (geometrical phases, topological quantum numbers, and Chern-Simons Theory) that are relevant in modern developments of the subject. It will provide students with an overview of key elements of the theory, as well as a solid preparation in calculational techniques.

This textbook is mainly for physics students at the advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate levels, especially those with a theoretical inclination. Its chief purpose is to give a systematic introduction to the main ingredients of the fundamentals of quantum theory, with special emphasis on those aspects of group theory (spacetime and permutational symmetries and group representations) and differential geometry (geometrical phases, topological quantum numbers, and Chern-Simons Theory) that are relevant in modern developments of the subject. It will provide students with an overview of key elements of the theory, as well as a solid preparation in calculational techniques.

The application of quantum mechanics to many-particle systems has been an active area of research in recent years as researchers have looked for ways to tackle difficult problems in this area. The quantum trajectory method provides an efficient computational technique for solving both stationary and time-evolving states, encompassing a large area o

This book is written with the belief that classical mechanics, as a theoretical discipline, possesses an inherent beauty, depth, and richness that far transcends its immediate applications in mechanical systems. These properties are manifested, by and large, through the coherence and elegance of the mathematical structure underlying the discipline, and are eminently worthy of being communicated to physics students at the earliest stage possible. This volume is therefore addressed mainly to advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate physics students who are interested in the application of modern mathematical methods in classical mechanics, in particular, those derived from the fields of topology and differential geometry, and also to the occasional mathematics student who is interested in important physics applications of these areas of mathematics. Its main purpose is to offer an introductory and broad glimpse of the majestic edifice of the mathematical theory of classical dynamics, not only in the time-honored analytical tradition of Newton, Laplace, Lagrange, Hamilton, Jacobi, and Whittaker, but also the more topological/geometrical one established by Poincare, and enriched by Birkhoff, Lyapunov, Smale, Siegel, Kolmogorov, Arnold, and Moser (as well as many others).

Introducing the reader to the very latest developments in the philosophical foundations of physics, this book covers advanced material at a level suitable for beginner and intermediate students. A detailed overview is provided of the central debates in the philosophy of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, quantum computation, and quantum gravity. This book enables both philosophers and physicists to engage with the most pressing problems in contemporary philosophy of physics in a fruitful way.

To mathematicians, mathematics is a happy game, to scientists a mere tool and to philosophers a Platonic mystery - or so the caricature runs. The caricature reflects the alleged 'cultural gap' between the disciplines a gap for which there too often has been, sadly, sound historical evidence. In many minds the lack of communication between philosophy and the exact disciplines is especially prominent. Yet in the past there was no separation - exact knowledge, covering both scientists and mathemati cians, was known as natural philosophy and the business of providing a critical view of the nature of reality and an accurate mathematical de scription of it constituted a single task from the glorious tradition begun by the early Greek philosophers even up until Newton's day (but I am thinking of Descartes and Leibniz I). The lack of communication between these professional groups has been particularly unfortunate, for the past half century has seen the most ex citing developments in mathematical physics since Newton. These devel opments hinged on the introduction of vast new reaches of mathematics into physics (non-Euclidean geometries, covariant formulations, non commutative algebras, functional analysis and so on) and conversely have challenged mathematicians to develop the appropriate mathematical fields. Equally, these developments have posed profound philosophical problems to do with the rejection of traditional conceptions concerning the nature of physical reality and physical theorising.

This book is a collection of outstanding papers on various aspects of entropy at the foundation of quantum physics. The covered topics range from purely foundational issues such as contextuality and Bell and Leggett–Garg inequalities to applications such as quantum key distribution, teleportation, and image encoding. The main ingredient binding them together in this book is that in all of the contained papers, entropy plays a key role either as a mathematical tool or as a link which bridges the gap between different fields of science.

Stochastic mechanics is a theory that holds great promise in resolving the mathematical and interpretational issues encountered in the canonical and path integral formulations of quantum theories. It provides an equivalent formulation of quantum theories, but substantiates it with a mathematically rigorous stochastic interpretation by means of a stochastic quantization prescription. The book builds on recent developments in this theory, and shows that quantum mechanics can be unified with the theory of Brownian motion in a single mathematical framework. Moreover, it discusses the extension of the theory to curved spacetime using second order geometry, and the induced Itô deformations of the spacetime symmetries. The book is self-contained and provides an extensive review of stochastic mechanics of the single spinless particle. The book builds up the theory on a step by step basis. It starts, in chapter 2, with a review of the classical particle subjected to scalar and vector potentials. In chapter 3, the theory is extended to the study of a Brownian motion in any potential, by the introduction of a Gaussian noise. In chapter 4, the Gaussian noise is complexified. The result is a complex diffusion theory that contains both Brownian motion and quantum mechanics as a special limit. In chapters 5, the theory is extended to relativistic diffusion theories. In chapter 6, the theory is further generalized to the context of pseudo-Riemannian geometry. Finally, in chapter 7, some interpretational aspects of the stochastic theory are discussed in more detail. The appendices concisely review relevant notions from probability theory, stochastic processes, stochastic calculus, stochastic differential geometry and stochastic variational calculus. The book is aimed at graduate students and researchers in theoretical physics and applied mathematics with an interest in the foundations of quantum theory and Brownian motion. The book can be used as reference material for courses on and further research in stochastic mechanics, stochastic quantization, diffusion theories on curved spacetimes and quantum gravity.

Beyond Einstein: Perspectives on Geometry, Gravitation, and Cosmology explores the rich interplay between mathematical and physical ideas by studying the interactions of major actors and the roles of important research communities over the course of the last century.