Related papers: A.P. Balachandran: Living in Physics
The extreme electromagnetic or gravitational fields associated with some astrophysical objects can give rise to macroscopic effects arising from the physics of the quantum vacuum. Therefore, these objects are incredible laboratories for…
A century ago, nuclear physics entered astrophysics, giving birth to a new field of science referred to as "Nuclear Astrophysics". With time, it developed at an impressive pace into a vastly inter- and multidisciplinary discipline bringing…
The driving force in the pursuit for quantum computation is the exciting possibility that quantum algorithms can be more efficient than their classical analogues. Research on the subject has unraveled several aspects of how that can happen.…
Abhyankar proved that every field of finite transcendence degree over $\mathbb{Q}$ or over a finite field is a homomorphic image of a subring of the ring of polynomials $\mathbb{Z}[T_1, \dots, T_n]$ (for some $n$ depending on the field). We…
Steven Weinberg was a giant of late 20th Century physics on whose shoulders we stand while groping for the science of the 21st Century. This article provides a too-brief summary of a selection of his many achievements -- eight decades of…
We scan Paul K. Feyerabend's work in philosophy of physics and of science more generally for insights that could be useful for the contemporary debate on the foundations of quantum mechanics. We take as our starting point what Feyerabend…
We consider fundamental physical constants which are among a few of the most important pieces of information we have learned about Nature after its intensive centuries-long studies. We discuss their multifunctional role in modern physics…
Even Einstein has to be wrong sometimes. However, when Einstein was wrong he created a 70 year debate about the strange behavior of quantum mechanics. His debate helped prove topics such as the indeterminacy of particle states, quantum…
Quantum mechanics has enjoyed a multitude of successes since its formulation in the early twentieth century. At the same time, it has generated puzzles that persist to this day. These puzzles have inspired a large literature in physics and…
An account is given of an interesting but unknown theory by Majorana regarding scalar quantum electrodynamics, elaborated several years before the known Pauli-Weisskopf theory. Theoretical calculations and their interpretation are given in…
It is impossible to review all the fundamental works of Landau Institute, which made important contribution to physics in general. Here I will discuss only a part of these works, only those which directly influence my own work during 50…
The 75th anniversary of Turing's seminal paper and his centennial year anniversary occur in 2011 and 2012, respectively. It is natural to review and assess Turing's contributions in diverse fields in the light of new developments that his…
On 14 December 1900 Max Planck first formulated the idea of energy quanta related to a new universal constant now known as Planck's constant. Despite the following progress of thus initiated "quantum mechanics", the physical origin of both…
COSMOPARTICLE PHYSICS is the specific crossdisciplinary field of science, studying foundations of particle physics and cosmology in the combination of indirect cosmological, astrophysical and physical signatures of their fundamental…
The pioneering work of E.C.G. Stueckelberg is briefly analyzed: the formalism of the Stueckelberg field, able to describe a massive vector field, is reviewed, and some applications are presented. In particular, starting from his very first…
150 years after the discovery of quaternions, Hamilton's conjecture that quaternions are a fundamental language for physics is reevaluated and shown to be essentially correct, provided one admits complex numbers in both classical and…
From the late 1920s to the early 1950s, cosmic rays were the main instrument to investigate what we now call "high-energy physics". In approximately 25 years, an intense experimental and theoretical work brought particle physics from its…
There are many striking phenomena which are attributed to ``quantum coherence''. It is natural to wonder if there are new quantum coherence effects waiting to be discovered which could lead to interesting results and perhaps even practical…
The mathematical achievements of Harry Kesten since the mid-1950s have revolutionized probability theory as a subject in its own right and in its associations with aspects of algebra, analysis, geometry, and statistical physics. Through his…
Quantum thermodynamics is an emerging research field aiming to extend standard thermodynamics and non-equilibrium statistical physics to ensembles of sizes well below the thermodynamic limit, in non-equilibrium situations, and with the full…