Related papers: Fundamental Physics
One of the main activities in science teaching, and in particular in Physics teaching, is not only the discussion of both modern problems and problems which solution is an urgent matter. It means that the picture of an active and alive…
Building on parallels between geometric quantum mechanics and classical mechanics, we explore an alternative basis for quantum thermodynamics that exploits the differential geometry of the underlying state space. We develop both…
In a first course to classical mechanics elementary physical processes like elastic two-body collisions, the mass-spring model, or the gravitational two-body problem are discussed in detail. The continuation to many-body systems, however,…
This text is a slightly edited version of lecture notes for a course I gave at ETH, during the Summer term 2001, to undergraduate Mathematics and Physics students. It covers a few selected topics from perturbation theory at an introductory…
For more than half a century, dualities have been at the heart of modern physics. From quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, quantum field theory and quantum gravity, dualities have proven useful in solving…
As it is well known, classical mechanics consists of several basic features like determinism, reductionism, completeness of knowledge and mechanicism. In this article the basic assumptions are discussed which underlie those features. It is…
Electromagnetic theory is central to physics. An undergraduate major in physics typically takes a semester or a year of electromagnetic theory as a junior or senior, and a graduate student in physics typically takes an additional semester…
This paper proposes a basic theory on physical reality, and a new foundation for quantum mechanics and classical mechanics. It does not only solve the problem of the arbitrariness on the operator ordering for the quantization procedure, but…
It is a common view in philosophy of physics that thermodynamics is a non-fundamental theory. This is motivated in particular by the fact that thermodynamics is considered to be a paradigmatic example for a theory that can be reduced to…
This is a position paper written as an introduction to the special volume on quantum algorithms I edited for the journal Mathematical Structures in Computer Science (Volume 20 - Special Issue 06 (Quantum Algorithms), 2010).
Just as expert physicists vary in their personal stances on interpretation in quantum mechanics, instructors vary on whether and how to teach interpretations of quantum phenomena in introductory modern physics courses. In this paper, we…
These lecture notes were prepared as a basic introduction to the theory of constrained systems which is how the fundamental forces of nature appear in their Hamiltonian formulation. Only a working knowledge of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian…
A strategy is suggested for teaching mathematically literate students, with no background in physics, just enough quantum mechanics for them to understand and develop algorithms in quantum computation and quantum information theory.…
This PhD thesis deals with a number of different problems in mathematical physics with the common thread that they have probabilistic aspects. The problems all stem from mathematical studies of lattice systems in statistical and quantum…
These lecture notes present an overview of equilibrium statistical mechanics of classical fluids, with special applications to the structural and thermodynamic properties of systems made of particles interacting via the hard-sphere…
In these lectures we present a few topics in Quantum Field Theory in detail. Some of them are conceptual and some more practical. They have been selected because they appear frequently in current applications to Particle Physics and String…
Advances in quantum technologies are giving rise to a revolution in the way fundamental physics questions are explored at the empirical level. At the same time, they are the seeds for future disruptive technological applications of quantum…
We present an explicit correspondence between quantum mechanics and the classical theory of irreversible thermodynamics as developed by Onsager, Prigogine et al. Our correspondence maps irreversible Gaussian Markov processes into the…
These notes provide an introduction to a number of those topics in Classical Mechanics that are useful for field theory.
We offer second year students the opportunity to explore Current Topics in Biophysics in a course co-taught by a physicist and a biologist. The interdisciplinary course allows university students to engage in analytical thinking that…