Related papers: In Memory of Julian Schwinger
Between 1941 and 1962, scalar-tensor theories of gravitation were suggested four times by different scientists in four different countries. The earliest originator, the Swiss mathematician W. Scherrer, was virtually unknown until now…
In 1935, Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (EPR) published a thought experiment that is entirely correct, has been demonstrated in real experiments, and is now the most famous in quantum physics. Their pioneering work…
Individual quantum objects display inseparable coexisting wave-like properties and particle-like properties; such inseparable coexistence can seem paradoxical and mind-boggling. The apparent paradox is resolved by the unified theory of…
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, "for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks." As noted by the Nobel committee, their work moved…
Christopher Fuchs and R\"udiger Schack have developed a way of understanding science, which, among other things, resolves many of the conceptual puzzles of quantum mechanics that have vexed people for the past nine decades. They call it…
This note is based upon a talk given at a celebration in Austin Texas of the achievements of J. Willard Gibbs. J. Willard Gibbs, the younger, was the first American physical sciences theorist. He was one of the inventors of statistical…
It is argued that the conclusions obtained by Renninger (Zeitschrift fur Physik 136, 251 (1953)), by means of an interferometer thought experiment, have important implications for a number of still ongoing discussions about quantum…
The multipolar Hamiltonian of quantum electrodynamics (QED) is extensively employed in chemical and optical physics to treat rigorously the interaction of electromagnetic fields with matter. It is also widely used to evaluate intermolecular…
Year 2005 was the World Year of Physics, and it was commemorated worldwide as the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's legendary works in which the foundations of at least three areas of modern physics were laid: statistical mechanics,…
These are lecture notes for a short winter course at the Department of Mathematics, University of Coimbra, Portugal, December 6--8, 2018. The course was part of the 13th International Young Researchers Workshop on Geometry, Mechanics and…
The vacuum of quantum electrodynamics is unstable against the formation of many-body states in the presence of an external electric field, manifesting itself as the creation of electron-positron pairs (Schwinger effect). This effect has…
Henry Eyring was, and still is, a towering figure in science. Some aspects of his life and science, beginning in Mexico and continuing in Arizona, California, Wisconsin, Germany, Princeton, and finally Utah, are reviewed here. Eyring moved…
This paper discusses an attempt to develop a mathematically rigorous theory of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). It deviates from the standard version of QED mainly in two aspects: it is assumed that the Coulomb forces are carried by…
In quantum electrodynamics, Schwinger showed in 1951 that in a uniform electric field the vacuum may spontaneously produce electron-positron pairs. For this to occur, the required electric field is exceptionally large, $\sim 10^{18}$ N/C.…
The quantum bouncer (QB) concept is a known QM textbook example of confined particle, namely, a solution to the 1D Schroedinger equation for a linear potential (the so-called Airy equation). It would be a great methodological challenge to…
Recently Drummond and Hillery [Phys. Rev.A 59, 691(1999)] presented a quantum theory of dispersion based on the analysis of a coupled system of the electromagnetic field and atoms in the multipolar QED formulation. The theory has led to the…
We present the physics of the quantum Zeno effect, whose gist is often expressed by invoking the adage "a watched pot never boils". We review aspects of the theoretical and experimental work done on the effect since its inception in 1977,…
I present my encounter with John Bell at CERN, our collaboration and joint work in particle physics. I also will recall our quantum debates and give my personal view on Bell's fundamental work on quantum theory, in particular, on…
One of the common features in all promising candidates of quantum gravity is the existence of a minimal length scale, which naturally emerges with a generalized uncertainty principle, or equivalently a modified commutation relation.…
The origin of quantum physics was the discovery of the base unit of electromagnetic action $h$ by Max Planck in 1900 when he analyzed the experimental results of the black body radiation. This permitted Albert Einstein a few years later to…