Related papers: Sidney Coleman's Dirac Lecture "Quantum Mechanics …
A personal and subjective recollection, concerning mainly Wilson's lectures delivered over the spring of 1972 at Princeton University (summary of a talk at Cornell University on November 16, 2013 at the occasion of the memorial Kenneth G.…
Lecture given at the Landau Institute Seminar, Col de Port, March 1994, intended for a qualitative discussion of recent theoretical results in the physics of 1D quantum wires. The consideration is mainly focused on observable quantities,…
Lecture given Wednesday 27 October 1993 at a Physics -- Computer Science Colloquium at the University of New Mexico. The lecture was videotaped; this is an edited transcript. It also incorporates remarks made at the Limits to Scientific…
In these informal lecture notes we outline different approaches used in doing calculations involving the Dirac equation in curved spacetime. We have tried to clarify the subject by carefully pointing out the various conventions used and by…
These notes are from a 4-lecture mini-course taught by the author at the conference on von Neumann algebras as part of the ``Geometrie non commutative en mathematiques et physique'' month at CIRM in 2004.
Lectures by the author at the 1986 Cargese summer school modestly corrected and uploaded for greater accessibility. Some of the author's views on the quantum mechanics of cosmology have changed from those presented here but may still be of…
Double-slit diffraction is a corner stone of quantum mechanics. It illustrates key features of quantum mechanics: interference and the particle-wave duality of matter. In 1965, Richard Feynman presented a thought experiment to show these…
This essay is based on a physics lecture given at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on May 24, 2006, Hong Kong. It has 5 sections and one page of references and suggested reading. The section titles are: 1. Origin of the…
This is a write-up of a short tutorial talk on high-intensity QED, video-presented at the 2021 annual Christmas meeting of the Central Laser Facility at Rutherford-Appleton Lab, UK. The first half consists of a largely historical…
We expose the Schr\"odinger quantum mechanics with traditional applications to Hydrogen atom. We discuss carefully the experimental and theoretical background for the introduction of the Schr\"odinger, Pauli and Dirac equations, as well as…
One hallmark of expertise in physics is the ability to translate between different representations of knowledge and use the representations that make the problem-solving process easier. In quantum mechanics, students learn about several…
This paper is based on a course given by the author at the University of Rome ``La Sapienza'' in the Academic year 2000/2001. The intended aim of the course was to rapidly introduce, although not in an exhaustive way, the non-expert PhD…
In this contribution we report about Feynman's approach to gravitation, starting from the records of his interventions at the Chapel Hill Conference of 1957. As well known, Feynman was concerned about the relation of gravitation with the…
This is a talk presented at the conference ``Historical and Philosophical Reflections on the Foundations of Quantum Field Theory,'' at Boston University, March 1996. It will be published in the proceedings of this conference.
These lectures were originally given at TASI and are directed at a level suitable for graduate students in High Energy Physics. They are intended to give an introduction to the theory and phenomenology of quantum chromodynamics (QCD),…
This paper records my opening remarks at Nobel Symposium 148, on Graphene and Quantum Matter, at Saltsj\"obaden, Sweden, in June 2010. After some broad comments on the quantum theory of matter as a frontier of physics, and some slightly…
These lectures briefly review our current understanding of classical and quantum gravity in three spacetime dimensions, concentrating on the quantum mechanics of closed universes and the (2+1)-dimensional black hole. Three formulations of…
The Dirac theory of electron and QED neglect gravitational field, while the corresponding to electron Kerr-Newman gravitational field has very strong influence on the Compton distances. It polarizes space-time, deforms the Coulomb field and…
Public lecture given at The Fields Institute, June 2, 2005.
General lectures on quantum gravity.