Related papers: In Memory of Julian Schwinger
The esteemed physicist Erwin Schroedinger, whose name is associated with the most notorious equation of quantum mechanics, also wrote a brief essay entitled 'What is Life?', asking: 'How can the events in space and time which take place…
In this paper we will present tha main features of what can be called Schwinger's foundational approach to Quantum Mechanics. The basic ingredients of this formulation are the \textit{selective measurements}, whose algebraic composition…
John Archibald Wheeler was a theoretical physicist who worked on both down-to-earth projects and highly speculative ideas, and always emphasized the importance of experiment and observation, even when speculating wildly. His research and…
Richard Feynman famously declared, "I think that I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics." Sean Carroll lamented the persistence of this sentiment in a recent opinion piece entitled, "Even Physicists Don't…
Simon van der Meer was a brilliant scientist and a true giant in the field of accelerators. His seminal contributions to accelerator science are essential to this day in our quest to satisfy the demands of modern particle physics. Whether…
Although practised as an art and science for ages, cryptography had to wait until the mid-twentieth century before Claude Shannon gave it a strong mathematical foundation. However, Shannon's approach was rooted is his own information…
The ether concept -- abandoned for a long time but reinstated by Dirac in 1951-1953 -- has in recent years emerged into a fashionable subject in theoretical physics, now usually with the name of the Einstein-Dirac ether. It means that one…
Dealing with Eugene Wigner's ideas on the measurement procedure in quantum physics and unearthing the controversy that pitted him against supporters of the interpretation of complementarity, I will show how Wigner and his followers…
In February 1978 Julian Schwinger's 60th birthday was celebrated with a SchwingerFest at UCLA. This article consists of transcripts of historical talks given there.
We consider a theory of scalar QED on a spatially compact 1+1-dimensional spacetime. By considering a constant electric field pointing down the compact dimension, we compute the quantum effective action by integrating out the scalar degrees…
Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is a cornerstone of particle physics and also finds diverse applications in condensed matter systems. Despite its significance, the dynamics of quantum electrodynamics under a quantum quench remains…
The breadth of Eugene Wigner's interests and contributions is amazing and humbling. At different times in his life he did seminal work in areas as diverse as pure mathematics and chemical engineering. His seminal research in physics is, of…
Starting from the earlier notions of stationary action principles, we show how Julian Schwinger's Quantum Action Principle descended from Dirac's formulation, which independently led Feynman to his path-integral formulation of quantum…
The purpose of this paper is to construct a quantum field theory suitable for describing quantum electrodynamics and Yang-Mills theory in a form which satisfies the conditions of the Millennium prize offered by the Clay Mathematics…
The 2016 Physics Nobel Prize honors a variety of discoveries related to topological phases and phase transitions. Here we sketch two exciting facets: the groundbreaking works by John Kosterlitz and David Thouless on phase transitions of…
The Schwinger equations of QED are rewritten in three different ways as integral equations involving functional derivatives, which are called weak field, strong field, and SCF quantum electrodynamics. The perturbative solutions of these…
If there exists a formulation of quantum mechanics which does not refer to a background classical spacetime manifold, it then follows as a consequence, (upon making one plausible assumption), that a quantum description of gravity should be…
Einstein's contribution to relativity is reviewed. It is pointed out that Weyl gave first unified theory of gravitation and electromagnetism and it was different than the five dimensional theory of Kaluza. Einstein began his work on…
Quite a long time ago several authors (see,e.g., \cite{Der}, \cite{Pe} ) mentioned that among pioneers of the quark idea we should take into consideration one more (in addition to M. Gell-Mann and G. Zweig) author, Andr\'{e} Petermann (1922…
Schroedinger's first proposal for the interpretation of quantum mechanics was based on a postulate relating the wave function on configuration space to charge density in physical space. Schroedinger apparently later thought that his…