Related papers: Enrico Fermi and the Old Quantum Physics
During the 1920s and 1930s, Italian physicists established strong relationships with scientists from other European countries and the United States. The career of Bruno Rossi, a leading personality in the study of cosmic rays and an Italian…
In this contribution I discuss a peak in Einstein's endeavor to extract as much information as possible about the nature of radiation from the Planck distribution is his paper "On the Quantum Theory of Radiation" of 1916. This is one of the…
In memory of the famous physicist Bruno Pontecorvo, whereof is just occurred the centenary anniversary of the birth and the twentieth anniversary of the death, this paper traces the scientific and human adventure of the italian scientist,…
After a brief historical perspective, we introduce the key notions of work and heat for quantum systems, to then apply them to quantum engines operating on quantum Otto and Carnot cycles. The irreversible and dissipative character of the…
We introduce a qubit-based version of the quantum switch, consisting in a variation of the Fermi problem. Two qubits start in a superposition state where one qubit is excited and the other in the ground state, but it is undefined which is…
The interplay between thermodynamics, general relativity and quantum mechanics has long intrigued researchers. Recently, important advances have been obtained in thermodynamics, mainly regarding its application to the quantum domain through…
A method for describing charged relativistic Fermi fields is proposed, in which particles of opposite charges are treated equally and states with negative energy are excluded. The concept of charge quantum number is introduced. Fields of…
A new kind of quantum statistics which interpolates between Bose and Fermi statistics is proposed beginning with the assumption that the quantum state of a many-particle system is a functional on the internal space of the particles. The…
We discuss, from a historiographical point of view, which was the degree of certainty that the physicists directly involved in the birth of Quantum Mechanics (Heisenberg, Born, Jordan, Dirac and Schr\"odinger) gave to the atomistic…
This review is based on lectures given by M. J. Duff summarising the far reaching contributions of Ettore Majorana to fundamental physics, with special focus on Majorana fermions in all their guises. The theoretical discovery of the…
A phenomenological theory is presented for two-dimensional quantum liquids in terms of the Fermi surface geometry. It is shown that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the properties of an interacting electron system and its…
After the development of a self-consistent quantum formalism nearly a century ago there began a quest for how to interpret the theoretical constructs of the formalism. In fact, the pursuit of new interpretations of quantum mechanics…
I sketch the main lines of development of the research in quantum gravity, from the first explorations in the early thirties to nowadays.
The quantum field theory in the presence of classical background electromagnetic fields is reviewed. We give a pedagogical introduction to the Feynman-Furry method of describing non-perturbative interactions with very strong electromagnetic…
This book includes my lectures, together with their problem sets and solutions, on 1) classical mechanics (one semester), 2) thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (one semester), and 3) quantum mechanics (one semester), which I have been…
From the philosopher's perspective, the interest in quantum computation stems primarily from the way that it combines fundamental concepts from two distinct sciences: physics (especially quantum mechanics) and computer science, each long a…
A complete theoretical model describing artificial disintegration of nuclei by bombardment with alpha-particles, developed by Majorana as early as in 1930, is discussed in detail alongside the basic experimental evidences that motivated it.…
In the Italian education system, secondary students (ages 14-19) face the foundations of quantum physics during the final term of scientific high school (pre-university year). The Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research…
This paper deals with the ways that the issue of completing quantum mechanics was brought into laboratories and became a topic in mainstream quantum optics. It focuses on the period between 1965, when Bell published what now we call Bell's…
We review the physics at the end of the nineteenth century and summarize the process of the establishment of Special Relativity by Albert Einstein in brief. Following in the giant's footsteps, we outline the scientific method which helps to…