IOP Concise Physics
Скачать книги из серии IOP Concise PhysicsParticle Physics
Our understanding of subatomic particles developed over many years, although a clear picture of the different particles, their interactions and their inter-relationships only emerged in the latter part of the twentieth century. The first «subatomic particles» to be investigated were those which exhibit readily observable macroscopic behavior, specifically these are the photon, which we observe as light and the electron, which is manifested as electricity. The true nature of these particles, however, only became clear within the last century or so. The development of the Standard Model provided clarification of the way in which various particles, specifically the hadrons, relate to one another and the way in which their properties are determined by their structure. The final piece, perhaps, of the final model, that is the means by which some particles acquire mass, has just recently been clarified with the observation of the Higgs boson. Since the 1970s it has been known that the measured solar neutrino flux was inconsistent with the flux predicted by solar models. The existence of neutrinos with mass would allow for neutrino flavor oscillations and would provide an explanation for this discrepancy. Only in the past few years, has there been clear experimental evidence that neutrinos have mass. The description of particle structure on the basis of the Standard Model, along with recent discoveries concerning neutrino properties, provides us with a comprehensive picture of the properties of subatomic particles. Part I of the present book provides an overview of the Standard Model of particle physics including an overview of the discovery and properties of the Higgs boson. Part II of the book summarizes the important investigations into the physics of neutrinos and provides an overview of the interpretation of these studies.
Novel Microstructures for Solids
For many years, evidence suggested that all solid materials either possessed a periodic crystal structure as proposed by the Braggs or they were amorphous glasses with no long-range order. In the 1970s, Roger Penrose hypothesized structures (Penrose tilings) with long-range order which were not periodic. The existence of a solid phase, known as a quasicrystal, that possessed the structure of a three dimensional Penrose tiling, was demonstrated experimentally in 1984 by Dan Shechtman and colleagues. Shechtman received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery. The discovery and description of quasicrystalline materials provided the first concrete evidence that traditional crystals could be viewed as a subset of a more general category of ordered materials. This book introduces the diversity of structures that are now known to exist in solids through a consideration of quasicrystals (Part I) and the various structures of elemental carbon (Part II) and through an analysis of their relationship to conventional crystal structures. Both quasicrystals and the various allotropes of carbon are excellent examples of how our understanding of the microstructure of solids has progressed over the years beyond the concepts of traditional crystallography.
Advances in Nanomaterials for Drug Delivery
Nanomedicine is a developing field, which includes different disciplines such as material science, chemistry, engineering and medicine devoted to the design, synthesis and construction of high-tech nanostructures. The ability of these structures to have their chemical and physical properties tuned by structural modification, has allowed their use in drug delivery systems, gene therapy delivery, and various types of theranostic approaches. Colloidal noble metal nanoparticles and other nanostructures have many therapeutic and diagnostic applications. The concept of drug targeting as a magic bullet has led to much research in chemical modification to design and optimize the binding to targeted receptors. It is important to understand the precise relationship between the drug and the carrier and its ability to target specific tissues, and pathogens to make an efficient drug delivery system. This book covers advances based on different drug delivery systems: polymeric and hyper branched nanomaterials, carbon-based nanomaterials, nature-inspired nanomaterials, and pathogen-based carriers.
Metamaterial Multiverse
Many physical properties of our universe, such as the relative strength of the fundamental interactions, the value of the cosmological constant, etc., appear to be fine-tuned for existence of human life. One possible explanation of this fine tuning assumes existence of a multiverse, which consists of a very large number of individual universes having different physical properties. Intelligent observers populate only a small subset of these universes, which are fine-tuned for life. In this book we will review several interesting metamaterial systems, which capture many features of important cosmological models and offer insights into the physics of many other non-trivial spacetime geometries, such as microscopic black holes, closed time-like curves (CTCs) and the Alcubierre warp drive.
The Molecule as Meme
It was not until 1971 that the authority for defining scientific units, the General Conference of Weights and Measures got around to defining the unit that is the basis of chemistry (the mole, or the quantity of something). Yet for all this tardiness in putting the chemical sciences on a sound quantitative basis, chemistry is an old and venerable subject and one naturally asks the question, why? Well, the truth is that up until the mid-1920s, many physicists did not believe in the reality of molecules. Indeed, it was not until after the physics community had accepted Ernest Rutherford's 1913 solar-system-like model of the atom, and the quantum mechanical model of the coupling of electron spins in atoms that physicists started to take seriously the necessity of explaining the chemical changes that chemists had been observing, investigating and recording since the days of the alchemists.
International Linear Collider (ILC)
The International Linear Collider (ILC) is a mega-scale, technically complex project, requiring large financial resources and cooperation of thousands of scientists and engineers from all over the world. Such a big and expensive project has to be discussed publicly, and the planned goals have to be clearly formulated. This book advocates for the demand for the project, motivated by the current situation in particle physics. The natural and most powerful way of obtaining new knowledge in particle physics is to build a new collider with a larger energy. In this approach, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was created and is now operating at the world record center of-mass energy of 13 TeV. Although the design of colliders with a larger energy of 50-100 TeV has been discussed, the practical realization of such a project is not possible for another 20-30 years. Of course, many new results are expected from LHC over the next decade. However, we must also think about other opportunities, and in particular, about the construction of more dedicated experiments. There are many potentially promising projects, however, the most obvious possibility to achieve significant progress in particle physics in the near future is the construction of a linear e+e- collider with energies in the range (250-1000) GeV. Such a project, the ILC, is proposed to be built in Kitakami, Japan. This book will discuss why this project is important and which new discoveries can be expected with this collider.
The Physics and Art of Photography, Volume 2
This book uses art photography as a point of departure for learning about physics, while also using physics as a point of departure for asking fundamental questions about the nature of photography as an art. Although not a how-to manual, the topics center around hands-on applications, sometimes illustrated by photographic processes that are inexpensive and easily accessible to students (including a versatile new process developed by the author, and first described in print in this series). A central theme is the connection between the physical interaction of light and matter on the one hand, and the artistry of the photographic processes and their results on the other. One half of Energy and Color focuses on the physics of energy, power, illuminance, and intensity of light, and how these relate to the photographic exposure, including a detailed example that follows the emission of light from the sun all the way through to the formation of the image in the camera. These concepts are described in both their traditional manner, but also using very-low sensitivity photography as an example, which brings the physical concepts to the fore in a visible way, whereas they are often hidden with ordinary high-speed photographic detectors. Energy and Color also considers color in terms of the spectrum of light, how it interacts with the subject, and how the camera's light detector interacts with the image focused upon it. But of equal concern is the only partially-understood and sometimes unexpected ways in which the human eye/brain interprets this spectral stimulus as color. The volume covers basic photographic subjects such as shutter, aperture, ISO, metering and exposure value, but also given their relations to the larger themes of the book less familiar topics such as the Jones-Condit equation, Lambertian versus isotropic reflections, reflection and response curves, and the opponent-process model of color perception. Although written at a beginning undergraduate level, the topics are chosen for their role in a more general discussion of the relation between science and art that is of interest to readers of all backgrounds and levels of expertise.
The Physics and Art of Photography, Volume 1
This book uses art photography as a point of departure for learning about physics, while also using physics as a point of departure for asking fundamental questions about the nature of photography as an art. Although not a how-to manual, the topics center around hands-on applications, most-often illustrated by photographic processes that are inexpensive and easily accessible to students (including a versatile new process developed by the author, and herein first described in print). A central theme is the connection between the physical interaction of light and matter on the one hand, and the artistry of the photographic processes and their results on the other. Geometry and the Nature of Light focuses on the physics of light and the optics of lenses, but also includes extended discussions of topics less commonly covered in a beginning text, including symmetry in art and physics, different physical processes of the scattering of light, photograms (photographic shadow prints) and the nature of shadows, elements of 2-dimensional design, pinhole photography and the view camera. Although written at a beginning undergraduate level, the topics are chosen for their role in a more general discussion of the relation between science and art that is of interest to readers of all backgrounds and levels of expertise.
Tying Light in Knots
Topology is the study of properties of geometrical objects that remain invariant as the object is bent, twisted, or otherwise continuously deformed. It has been an indispensable tool in particle physics and solid state physics for decades, but in recent years it has become increasingly relevant in classical and quantum optics as well. It makes appearances through such diverse phenomena as Pancharatnam-Berry phases, optical vortices and solitons, and optical simulations of solid-state topological phenomena. This book concisely provides the necessary mathematical background needed to understand these developments and to give a rapid survey of some of the optical applications where topological issues arise.
The Statistical Eyeglasses
Science often deals with hard-to-see phenomena, and they only stand out and become real when viewed through the lens of complex statistical tools. This book is not a textbook about statistics applied to science – there are already many excellent books to choose from – rather, it tries to give an overview of the basic principles that physical scientists use to analyze their data and bring out the order of Nature from the fog of background noise.