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Not only was E.P. Wigner one of the most active creators of 20th century physics, he was also always interested in expressing his opinion in philosophical, political or sociological matters. This volume of his collected works covers a wide selection of his essays about science and society, about himself and his colleagues. Annotated by J. Mehra, this volume will become an important source of reference for historians of science, and it will be pleasant reading for every physicist interested in forming ideas in modern physics.

This collection of articles, which were first published in 1958 and written on various occasions between 1932 and 1957, forms a sequel to Danish physician Niels Bohr's earlier essays in Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (1934).“The theme of the papers is the epistemological lesson which the modern development of atomic physics has given us and its relevance for analysis and synthesis in many fields of human knowledge.“The articles in the previous edition were written at a time when the establishment of the mathematical methods of quantum mechanics had created a firm foundation for the consistent treatment of atomic phenomena, and the conditions for an unambiguous account of experience within this framework were characterized by the notion of complementarity. In the papers collected here, this approach is further developed in logical formulation and given broader application.”

Can atoms be looked upon in an organism metaphor? This book shows how groups of quarks and particles become atoms through energy growth and fusion. Atoms seem to have an advanced management system. They constantly perform several advanced tasks: the strong nuclear force, the attractive force, the repulsive force, and several other energy tasks. In addition, atoms seem to communicate with each other and are aware of their surroundings. They also constantly convert energy through Atomic Phase Displacement. These actions indicate an advanced management system. Atoms seem to act upon external information to preserve their structures. The properties of the attractive force are discussed, and a model combining atomic bindings and gravity is presented. This model works with quantum mechanics and astrophysics. Energy balance in atoms, dark energy, and dark matter are also included in the model – the ilefos model. The ilefos model suggests that atoms have a complex management system that can be looked upon in an organism metaphor.

This handbook comprises a comprehensive reference source that unifies the entire fields of atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics, assembling the principal ideas, techniques and results of the field from atomic spectroscopy to applications to comets and global change. Its 91 chapters are written by over 100 authors, all leaders in their respective disciplines.Carefully edited to ensure a uniform coverage and style and with extensive cross references, together with a guide to the primary research literature, it is both a source of information and an inspiration for graduate students and other researchers new to the field. All chapters offer diagrams of apparatus, graphs, and tables of data.Twenty-seven years on since the Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics Handbook was first published, and sixteen years since the publication of the revised Springer edition, the Springer AMO Physics Handbook has become a standard reference in the field, and a starting point for generations of graduate students. In recent years, there have been dramatic advances in many areas of AMO physics involving both fundamental changes and new applications in areas such as quantum information, ultracold atoms, and searches for dark matter. This new edition contains an expanded coverage of these rapidly emerging fields.

Superatoms are a growing topic of interest in nanoscience, bringing the physics of electronic structure together with the chemistry of atomically precise clusters. They offer the prospect of materials design based on the targeted tunability of nanoscale building blocks, creating electronic materials that can be used as everything from catalysts to computing hardware.This book is designed to be an introduction to the field, covering the history of the concept and related theoretical models from cluster physics. It provides an overview of modern theoretical techniques and presents a survey of recent literature, with particular emphasis on the utilization of these nanoscale building blocks. It explores the jellium model, shell structure in nuclear physics, and the relationship of these to the solution of the Schrödinger equation for the atom. The subsequent extension into density functional theory enables multiple examples of recent literature studies to be used to demonstrate the key concepts.This book is an ideal introduction for students looking to build bridges between cluster and condensed matter physics and the chemistry of superatoms, in particular at a graduate level.

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfängen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen für die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfügung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden müssen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben.

The raw numbers of high-energy-density physics are amazing: shock waves at hundreds of km/s (approaching a million km per hour), temperatures of millions of degrees, and pressures that exceed 100 million atmospheres. This title surveys the production of high-energy-density conditions, the fundamental plasma and hydrodynamic models that can describe them and the problem of scaling from the laboratory to the cosmos. Connections to astrophysics are discussed throughout. The book is intended to support coursework in high-energy-density physics, to meet the needs of new researchers in this field, and also to serve as a useful reference on the fundamentals. Specifically the book has been designed to enable academics in physics, astrophysics, applied physics and engineering departments to provide in a single-course, an introduction to fluid mechanics and radiative transfer, with dramatic applications in the field of high-energy-density systems. This second edition includes pedagogic improvements to the presentation throughout and additional material on equations of state, heat waves, and ionization fronts, as well as problem sets accompanied by solutions.

Riddled with jealousy, rivalry, missed opportunities and moments of genius, the history of the atom's discovery is as bizarre, as capricious, and as weird as the atom itself. John Dalton gave us the first picture of the atom in the early 1800s. Almost 100 years later the young misfit New Zealander, Ernest Rutherford, showed the atom consisted mostly of space, and in doing so overturned centuries of classical science. It was a brilliant Dane, Neils Bohr, who made the next great leap - into the incredible world of quantum theory. Yet, he and a handful of other revolutionary young scientists weren't prepared for the shocks Nature had up her sleeve. This'insightful, compelling'book (New Scientist) reveals the mind-bending discoveries that were destined to upset everything we thought we knew about reality and unleash a dangerous new force upon the world. Even today, as we peer deeper and deeper into the atom, it throws back as many questions at us as answers.

Atomic and Molecular Processes focuses on radiative and collisional processes involving atoms or molecules, including photoionization, elastic and inelastic scattering of electrons, energy loss by slow electrons, excitation, ionization, detachment, charge transfer, elastic scattering, and chemical reactions. The selection first offers information on forbidden and allowed transitions, including forbidden transitions in diatomic molecular spectra; forbidden transitions in crystals; calculations of atomic line strengths; and measurements of atomic transition probabilities. The book also ponders on photoionization processes, photodetachment, and high temperature shock waves. The manuscript elaborates on electronic and ionic recombination, elastic scattering of electrons, and the motions of slow electrons in gases. The book also evaluates the theory of excitation and ionization by electron impact; measurement of collisional excitation and ionization cross sections; and spectral line broadening in plasmas. The selection is a dependable reference for readers interested in atomic and molecular processes.

This volume presents the latest advancements and future perspectives of atomic, molecular and optical (AMO) physics and its vital role in modern sciences and technologies. The chapters are devoted to a wide range of quantum systems, with an emphasis on the understanding of ionization, high-harmonic generation, molecular orbital imaging and coherent control phenomena originating from light-matter interactions. The book overviews current research landscape and highlight major scientific trends in AMO physics interfacing with interdisciplinary sciences. It may be particularly interesting for young researchers working on establishing their scientific interests and goals.

This thesis describes a proof-of-principle experiment demonstrating a technique for stable isotope enrichment called Magnetically Activated and Guided Isotope Separation (MAGIS). Over the past century many enriched isotopes have become available, thanks largely to electromagnetic separators called calutrons. Due to substantial maintenance and operating costs, the United States decommissioned the last of its calutrons in 1998, leading to demand for alternative methods of isotope separation. The work presented here suggests the promise for MAGIS as a viable alternative to the calutrons.The MAGIS technique combines optical pumping with a scalable magnetic field gradient to enrich atoms of a specific isotope in an atomic beam. Benchmarking this work against the calutron using lithium as a test case, the author demonstrated comparable enrichment in a manner that should scale to the production of similar quantities, while requiring vastly less energy input.

This book provides a chronological introduction to the electromagnetic theory of light, using selected extracts from classic texts such as Gilbert's De Magnete, Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity, and Huygens'Treatise on Light. Particular attention is given to the works of Faraday, Maxwell and Heaviside, scientists who unified the formerly separate disciplines of electricity, magnetism and light. Their electromagnetic theory—developed during the 19th century—would lead to the invention of modern radar, electrical power grids, and telecommunication networks.Each chapter of this book begins with a short introduction followed by a reading selection. Carefully crafted study questions draw out key points in the text and focus the reader's attention on the author's methods, analysis and conclusions. Numerical and laboratory exercises at the end of each chapter test the reader's ability to understand and apply key concepts from the text.Electricity, Magnetism and Light is the third of four volumes in A Student's Guide through the Great Physics Texts. This book grew out of a four-semester undergraduate physics curriculum designed to encourage a critical and circumspect approach to natural science while at the same time preparing students for advanced coursework in physics.This book is particularly suitable as a college-level textbook for students of the natural sciences, history or philosophy. It can also serve as a textbook for advanced high-school or home-schooled students, or as a thematically-organized source-book for scholars and motivated lay-readers. In studying the classic scientific texts included herein, the reader will be drawn toward a lifetime of contemplation.

Much of our understanding of physics in the last 30-plus years has come from research on atoms, photons, and their interactions. Collecting information previously scattered throughout the literature, Modern Atomic Physics provides students with one unified guide to contemporary developments in the field.After reviewing metrology and preliminary mat

This book is devoted to the calculation of hot-plasma properties which generally requires a huge number of atomic data. It is the first book that combines information on the details of the basic atomic physics and its application to atomic spectroscopy with the use of the relevant statistical approaches. Information like energy levels, radiative rates, collisional and radiative cross-sections, etc., must be included in equilibrium or non-equilibrium models in order to describe both the atomic-population kinetics and the radiative properties. From the very large number of levels and transitions involved in complex ions, some statistical (global) properties emerge. The book presents a coherent set of concepts and compact formulas suitable for tractable and accurate calculations. The topics addressed are: radiative emission and absorption, and a dozen of other collisional and radiative processes; transition arrays between level ensembles (configurations, superconfigurations); effective temperatures of configurations, superconfigurations, and ions; charge-state distributions; radiative power losses and opacity. There are many numerical examples and comparisons with experiment presented throughout the book. The plasma properties described in this book are especially relevant to large nuclear fusion facilities such as the NIF (California) and the ITER (France), and to astrophysics.Methods relevant to the central-field configurational model are described in detail in the appendices: tensor-operator techniques, second-quantization formalism, statistical distribution moments, and the algebra of partition functions. Some extra tools are propensity laws, correlations, and fractals. These methods are applied to the analytical derivation of many properties, specially the global ones, through which the complexity is much reduced. The book is intended for graduate-level students, and for physicists working in the field.

In these days of specialization it is important to bring together physicists working in diverse areas to exchange and share their ideas and excitement. This leads to cross-fertilization of ideas, and it enriches, as in biological systems, a specialized field with new strength, development and direction derived from another area. Although this might be an uncommon thing, it is an important step in our under­ standing of the physical world around us, which is, after aIl, the main purpose of physics. The seed for this conference was really sowed when one of us (MB) and Mr. Manngärd showed some a-scattering data at backward angles to FBM one summer about four years ago. That occasion led to a long research collaboration between the Abo Akademi physicists and other scientists in several countries. The actual idea to explore the possibility of holding a conference, however, crystallized in the summer of 1989 during a visit of FBM to Abo Akademi. The final decision to organize a conference was made after MB visited Profes­ sor Ben Mottelson in Copenhagen and Professor Anagnostatos in Athens. At this point it was recognized that there are similarities as weIl as differences between clustering phenomena in nuclei and systems consisting of atoms. It was therefore conjectured that it could be very stimulating to bring together these groups to exchange their ideas and to leam from each other's fields. A conference along these lines, we hoped, would contribute to an increased mutual understanding.

Electron EM reviews the theoretical and experimental work of the last 30 years on continuous electron emission in energetic ion-atom collisions. High incident energies for which the projectile is faster than the mean orbital velocity of the active electron are considered. Emphasis is placed on the interpretation of ionization mechanisms. They are interpreted in terms of Coulomb centers associated with the projectile and target nuclear fields which strongly interact with the outgoing electron. General properties of the two-center electron emission are analyzed. Particular attention is given to screening effects. A brief overview of multiple ionization processes is also presented. The survey concludes with a complete compilation of experimental studies of ionization cross sections.

This book aims to give a comprehensive view on the present status of a tremendously fast-developing field - the quantum dynamics of fragmenting many-particle Coulomb systems. In striking contrast to the profound theo­ retical knowledge, achieved from extremely precise experimental results on the static atomic and molecular structure, it was only three years ago when the three-body fundamental dynamical problem of breaking up the hydro­ gen atom by electron impact was claimed to be solved in a mathematically consistent way. Until now, more'complicated', though still fundamental scenarios, ad­ dressing the complete fragmentation of the'simplest'many-electron system, the helium atom, under the action of a time-dependent external force, have withstood any consistent theoretical description. Exceptions are the most'trivial'situations where the breakup is induced by the impact of a single real photon or of a virtual photon under a perturbation caused by fast, low­ charged particle impact. Similarly, the dissociation of the'simplest'molecu­ lar systems like Ht or HD+, fragmentating in collisions with slow electrons, or the H3 molecule breaking apart into two or three'pieces'as a result of a single laser-photon excitation, establish a major challenge for state-of-the-art theoretical approaches.

This book addresses hybrid simulation of plasmas; it is aimed at developing insight into the essence of plasma behavior. Major current applications are to astrophysical and space plasmas. Some applications are connected with active experiments in space. However, hybrid simulations are also being used to gain an understanding of basic plasma phenomena such as particle acceleration by shocks, magnetic field reconnect ion in neutral current sheets, generation of waves by beams, mass loading of the supersonic flow by heavy pickup ions and the dynamics of tangential discontinuities. Such simulations may be very important not only for the study of the astrophysical plasmas, but also for the study of the magnetically and inertially contained fusion plasmas, and other laboratory plasma devices. Plasma is the fourth state of matter, consisting of electrons, ions and 4 neutral atoms, usually at temperatures above 10 K. The stars and sun are plasmas; the local interstellar medium, the solar wind, magnetospheres and ionospheres of planets and comets, Van-Allen belts, etc., are all plasmas. Indeed, much of the known matter in the universe is plasma.

Along with its inherent interdisciplinary character, chemical physics is also a recognised science on its own. Its foundations consist of understanding chemical phenomena in terms of the most fundamental laws of physics. This book focuses on the concepts on which this science is founded rather than on the applications. The subject is presented starting from the main ideas of physics (classical, quantum and statistical) relevant to the description of phenomena of interest from the chemical point of view. The authors have taken an individual approach in their presentation of the essence of a connected theory rather than mere explanations of apparently unrelated facts. Audience: The book will be useful to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in fields such as chemistry, physics, materials science, engineering and biology, where there is a need for a knowledge of chemistry which includes, beside the presentation of facts, their explanation in terms of general principles.

HISTORICAL PRELUDE Ettore Majorana's fame solidly rests on testimonies like the following, from the evocative pen of Giuseppe Cocconi. At the request of Edoardo Amaldi, he wrote from CERN (July 18, 1965):'In January 1938, after having just graduated, I was invited, essen­ tially by you, to come to the Institute of Physics at the University in Rome for six months as a teaching assistant, and once I was there I would have the good fortune of joining Fermi, Bernardini (who had been given a chair at Camerino a few months earlier) and Ageno (he, too, a new graduate), in the research of the products of disintegration of /-L'mesons'(at that time called mesotrons or yukons), which are produced by cosmic rays [... ]'It was actually while I was staying with Fermi in the small laboratory on the second floor, absorbed in our work, with Fermi working with a piece of Wilson's chamber (which would help to reveal mesons at the end of their range) on a lathe and me constructing a jalopy for the illumination of the chamber, using the flash produced by the explosion of an aluminum ribbon short circuited on a battery, that Ettore Majorana came in search of Fermi. I was introduced to him and we exchanged few words. A dark face. And that was it.

It is apparent from the history of science, that few-body problems have an interdis­ ciplinary character. Newton, after solving the two-body problem so brilliantly, tried his hand at the Sun-Earth-Moon system. Here he failed in two respects: neither was he able to compute the motion of the moon accurately, nor did he understand the reason for that. It took a long time to understand the fundamental importance of Newton's failure, and only Poincare realised what was the fundamental difficulty in Newtons programme. Nowadays, the term deterministic chaos is associated with this problem. The deep insights of Poincare were neglected by the founding fathers of Quantum Physics. Thus history was repeated by Bohr and his students. After quantising the hydrogen atom, they soon found that the textbook case of a three-body problem in atomic physics, the 3He-atom, did not yield to the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantisation methods. Only these days do people realise what precisely were the difficulties connected to this semi­ classical way of treating quantum systems. Our field, as we know it today, began in principle in the early 1950's, when Watson sketched the outlines of three-body scattering theory. Mathematical rigour was achieved by Faddeev and thereafter, at the beginning of the 1960's, the quantum three-body prob­ lem, at least as far as short-range forces were concerned, w&s tamed. In the years that followed, through the work of others, who first applied Faddeev's methods, but later added new techniques, the three-and four-body problems became fully housebroken.

The sixteenth European Conference on Few Body Problems in Physics has taken place from June 1 to June 6, 1998, in Autrans, a little village in the mountains, close to Grenoble. The Conference follows those organized in Peniscola (1995), Amsterdam (1993), Elba (1991), Uzhgorod (1990)... The present one has been organized by a group of physicists working in different fields at the University Joseph Fourier of Grenoble who find in this occasion a good opportunity to join their efforts. The core of the organizing committee was nevertheless located at the Institut des Sciences Nucleaires, whose physicists, especially in the group of theoretical physics, have a long tradition in the domain. The Few Body Conference has a natural tendency to be a theoretical one - the exchange about the methods used in different fields is the common point to most participants. It also has a tendency to be a hadronic physics one - the corresponding physics community, perhaps due to the existence of experimen­ tal facilities devoted to the study of few body systems, is better organized. In preparing the scientific program, we largely relied on the advices of the Inter­ national Advisory Committee, while avoiding to follow these trends too closely.

This book has developed through a series of lectures on atomic theory given these last eight years at Chalmers University of Technology and several oth­ er research centers. These courses were intended to make the basic elements of atomic theory available to experimentalists working with the hyperfine structure and the optical properties of atoms and to provide some insight into recent developments in the theory. The original intention of this book has gradually extended to include a wide range of topics. We have tried to provide a complete description of atomic theory, bridging the gap between introductory books on quantum mechanics - such as the book by Merzbacher, for instance - and present­ day research in the field. Our presentation is limited to static atomic prop­ erties, such as the effective electron-electron interaction, but the formalism can be extended without major difficulties to include dynamic properties, such as transition probabilities and dynamic polarizabilities.

This text is an introduction to the physics of collisional plasmas, as opposed to plasmas in space. It is intended for graduate students in physics and engineering. The first chapter introduces with progressively increasing detail, the fundamental concepts of plasma physic. The motion of individual charged particles in various configurations of electric and magnetic fields is detailed in the second chapter while the third chapter considers the collective motion of the plasma particles described according to a hydrodynamic model. The fourth chapter is most original in that it introduces a general approach to energy balance, valid for all types of discharges comprising direct current(DC) and high frequency (HF) discharges, including an applied static magnetic field. The basic concepts required in this fourth chapter have been progressively introduced in the previous chapters. The text is enriched with approx. 100 figures, and alphabetical index and 45 fully resolved problems. Mathematical and physical appendices provide complementary information or allow to go deeper in a given subject.

Few-body resonances are in the frontiers of resonance studies. Very similar problems occur in atomic and molecular physics, nuclear physics and high-energy physics. This collection presents the state of the art of the studies of resonance states in these fields and demonstrates their common methodological aspects. Most of the contributions are theoretical, but quite a few are closely linked with experiments through the data they are dealing with.

The fundamental goal of physics is an understanding of the forces of nature in their simplest and most general terms. Yet there is much more involved than just a basic set of equations which eventually has to be solved when applied to specific problems. We have learned in recent years that the structure of the ground state of field theories (with which we are generally concerned) plays an equally funda­ mental role as the equations of motion themselves. Heisenberg was probably the first to recognize that the ground state, the vacuum, could acquire certain prop­ erties (quantum numbers) when he devised a theory of ferromagnetism. Since then, many more such examples are known in solid state physics, e. g. supercon­ ductivity, superfluidity, in fact all problems concerned with phase transitions of many-body systems, which are often summarized under the name synergetics. Inspired by the experimental observation that also fundamental symmetries, such as parity or chiral symmetry, may be violated in nature, it has become wide­ ly accepted that the same field theory may be based on different vacua. Practical­ ly all these different field phases have the status of more or less hypothetical models, not (yet) directly accessible to experiments. There is one magnificent ex­ ception and this is the change of the ground state (vacuum) of the electron-posi­ tron field in superstrong electric fields.

From the Editors Preface:'Quark Matter 1987 was attended by about 250 scientists, representing 75 research institutions around the world - the scientific community engaged in experimental and theoretical studies of high energy nuclear collisions. The central theme of the meeting was the possibility of achieving extreme energy densities in extended systems of strongly interacting matter - with the ultimate aim of creating in the laboratory a deconfined state of matter, a state in which quarks and gluons attain the active degrees of freedom. High energy accelerator beams and cosmic radiation projectiles provide the experimental tools for this endeavour; on the theoretical side, it is intimately connected to recent developments in the non-perturbative study of quantum chromodynamics. Phase transitions between hadronic matter and quark-gluon plasma are of basic interest also for our understanding of the dynamics of the early universe... A very special feature of this Sixth Quark Matter Conference was the advent of the first experimental results from dedicated accelerator studies. These were conducted during 1986/87 at the AGS of Brookhaven National Laboratory... and at the CERN SPS... An intense discussion of these data formed the main activity of the meeting.

New developments for hydrodynamical dynamo theory have been spurred by recent evidence of self-sustained dynamo activity in laboratory experiments with liquid metals.The emphasis in the present volume is on the introduction of powerful mathematical techniques required to tackle modern multiscale analysis of continous systems and there application to a number of realistic model geometries of increasing complexity. This introductory and self-contained research monograph summarizes the theoretical state-of-the-art to which the author has made pioneering contributions.

This book focuses on the recent progress in nanophotonics technology to be used to develop novel nano-optical devices, fabrication technology, and security systems. It begins with a review of the concept of dressed photons and applications to devices, fabrication, and systems; principles and applications. Further topics include: DNA process for quantum dot chain, photon enhanced emission microscopy, near field spectroscopy of metallic nanostructure, self-organized fabrication of composite semiconductor quantum dots, formation of metallic nanostructure, and nanophotonic information systems with security. These topics are reviewed by seven leading scientists. This overview is a variable resource for engineers and scientists working in the field of nanophotonics.

This book is an outgrowth of courses in plasma physics which I have taught at Kiel University for many years. During this time I have tried to convince my students that plasmas as different as gas dicharges, fusion plasmas and space plasmas can be described in a uni ed way by simple models. The challenge in teaching plasma physics is its apparent complexity. The wealth of plasma phenomena found in so diverse elds makes it quite different from atomic physics, where atomic structure, spectral lines and chemical binding can all be derived from a single equation—the Schrödinger equation. I positively accept the variety of plasmas and refrain from subdividing plasma physics into the traditional, but arti cially separated elds, of hot, cold and space plasmas. This is why I like to confront my students, and the readers of this book, with examples from so many elds. By this approach, I believe, they will be able to become discoverers who can see the commonality between a falling apple and planetary motion. As an experimentalist, I am convinced that plasma physics can be best understood from a bottom-up approach with many illustrating examples that give the students con dence in their understanding of plasma processes. The theoretical framework of plasma physics can then be introduced in several steps of re nement. In the end, the student (or reader) will see that there is something like the Schrödinger equation, namely the Vlasov-Maxwell model of plasmas, from which nearly all phenomena in collisionless plasmas can be derived.

This book aims to coherently present applications of group analysis to integro-differential equations in an accessible way. The book will be useful to both physicists and mathematicians interested in general methods to investigate nonlinear problems using symmetries. Differential and integro-differential equations, especially nonlinear, present the most effective way for describing complex processes. Therefore, methods to obtain exact solutions of differential equations play an important role in physics, applied mathematics and mechanics. This book provides an easy to follow, but comprehensive, description of the application of group analysis to integro-differential equations. The book is primarily designed to present both fundamental theoretical and algorithmic aspects of these methods. It introduces new applications and extensions of the group analysis method. The authors have designed a flexible text for postgraduate courses spanning a variety of topics.

The Quantum Mechanics of Matter shows how quantum mechanical methods are used to explain the behaviour of matter, from the scale of nuclei and atoms to molecules and solids. The hydrogen atom is discussed in detail, as well as hydrogen-like systems such a

The conversion of energy generated in the Sun's interior creates its hot corona and a wealth of dynamical phenomena such as flares and mass ejections. Based on recent significant progress in understanding magnetic reconnection and a wealth of new observations of energetic particle signatures from the sun, the present volume reviews the current theoretical and experimental status in the field. Paying attention to both the details and the broader picture, this book addresses both the experienced researcher as well as non-specialist researchers from related areas and postgraduate students.

In summary, we have demonstrated intense x-ray lasing from nickel-like plasmas of Mo, Pd, Ag, and Sn by utilizing a short (8 ps) prepulse irradiating the target at a grazing angle of incidence of 22.5°, i.e., collinear with the 3 J, 8 ps main pulse. Saturated lasing has not been proved yet, but comparison with signal levels achieved in previous work suggests that saturation has well been reached in these experiments. This is supported by the fact that a large range of prepulse energies and time intervals gives rise to intense x-ray lasing, as has been demonstrated in the case of Pd. References 1. Yu.V. Afanas'ev and V.N. Shlyaptsev:'Formation of a population inversion of transitions in Ne-like ions in steady-state and transient plasmas', Sov. J. Quant. Electron. 19, 1606, 1989. 2. M.P. Kalashnikov et al.:'Saturated operation of a transient collisional x-ray laser', Phys. Rev. A 57, 4778, 1998; J. Dunn et al.:'Gain saturation regime for laser-driven tabletop, transient Ni-like ion X-ray lasers', Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 4834, 2000. 3. V.N. Shlyaptsev et al.: “Numerical study of transient and capillary x-ray lasers and their applications”, Proc. SPIE, Vol. 5197, 221-228, 2003; R. Keenan et al., “Efficient pumping scheme for high-average brightness collisonal x-ray lasers”, ibid., 213-220.

This book results from recent studies aimed at answering questions raised by astrophycists who use values of transport coefficients that are old and often unsatisfactory. The few books dealing with the rigorous kinetic theory of a ionized plasma are based on the so called Landau (Fokker-Planck) equation and they seldom relate the microscopic results with their macroscopic counterpart provided by classical non-equilibrium thermodynamics. In this book both issues are thoroughly covered. Starting from the full Boltzmann equation for inert dilute plasmas and using the Hilbert-Chapman-Enskog method to solve the first two approximations in Knudsen´s parameter, we construct all the transport properties of the system within the framework of linear irreversible thermodynamics. This includes a systematic study of all possible cross effects (which, except for a few cases, were never treated in the literature) as well as the famous H-theorem. The equations of magneto-hydrodynamics for dilute plasmas, including the rather surprising results obtained for the viscomagnetic effects, may be now fully assessed. This book will be of immediate interest to the plasma physics community, as well as to astrophysicists. It is also likely to make an impact in the field of cold plasmas, involving laser cooled Rydberg atoms.

Keeping abreast of the latest techniques and applications, this new edition of the standard reference and graduate text on laser spectroscopy has been completely revised and expanded. While the general concept is unchanged, the new edition features a broad array of new material, e.g. frequency doubling in external cavities, reliable cw-parametric oscillators, tunable narrow-band UV sources, more sensitive detection techniques, tunable femtosecond and sub-femtosecond lasers (X-ray region and the attosecond range), control of atomic and molecular excitations, frequency combs able to synchronize independent femtosecond lasers, coherent matter waves, and still more applications in chemical analysis, medical diagnostics, and engineering. This new edition has been completely revised, especially the chapters on non-linear spectroscopy, ion trapping, ultra short laser pulses and new developments have been significantly improved and expanded. 50 new figures illustrate the newest developments and results.

Magnetic?elds are easily generated in astrophysical plasma owing to its?6 high conductivity. Magnetic?elds, having strengths of order few 10 G, correlated on several kiloparsec scales are seen in spiral galaxies. Their origin could be due to ampli?cation of a small seed?eld by a turbulent galactic dynamo. In several galaxies, like the famous M51, magnetic?elds are well correlated (or anti-correlated) with the optical spiral arms. These are the weakest large-scale?elds observed in cosmic space. The strongest magnets in space are presumably the so-called magnetars, the highly mag- 15 netized (with the strength of the?eld of about 10 G) young neutron stars formed in the supernova explosions. The energy of magnetic?elds is accumulated in astrophysical plasma, and the sudden release of this energy – an original electrodynamical ‘burst'or‘explosion'–takesplaceunderde?nitebutquitegeneralconditions(P- att, 1992; Sturrock, 1994; Kivelson and Russell, 1995; Rose, 1998; Priest and Forbes, 2000; Somov, 2000; Kundt, 2001). Such a ‘?are'in ast- physical plasma is accompanied by fast directed ejections (jets) of plasma, powerful?ows of heat and hard electromagnetic radiation as well as by impulsive acceleration of charged particles to high energies.

Complex plasmas are dusty plasmas in which the density and electric charges of the dust grains are sufficiently high to induce long-range grain-grain interactions, as well as strong absorption of charged-plasma components. Together with the sources replenishing the plasma such systems form a highly dissipative thermodynamically open system that exhibits many features of collective behaviour generally found in complex systems. Most notably among them are self-organized patterns such as plasma crystals, plasma clusters, dust stars and further spectacular new structures. Beyond their intrinsic scientific interest, the study of complex plasmas grows in importance in a great variety of fields, ranging from space-plasma sciences to applied fields such as plasma processing, thin-film deposition and even the production of computer chips by plasma etching, in which strongly interacting clouds of complex plasmas can cause major contamination of the final product. Intended as first introductory but comprehensive survey of this rapidly emerging field, the present book addresses postgraduate students as well as specialist and nonspecialist researchers with a general background in either plasma physics, space sciences or the physics of complex systems.

Laser ablation describes the interaction of intense optical fields with matter, in which atoms are selectively driven off by thermal or nonthermal mechanisms. The field of laser ablation physics is advancing so rapidly that its principal results are seen only in specialized journals and conferences. This will be the first book that combines the most recent results in this rapidly advancing field with authoritative treatment of laser ablation and its applications, including the physics of high-power laser-matter interaction. Many practical applications exist, ranging from inertial confinement fusion to propulsion of aerostats for pollution monitoring to laser ignition of hypersonic engines to laser cleaning nanoscale contaminants in high-volume computer hard drive manufacture to direct observation of the electronic or dissociative states in atoms and molecules, to studying the properties of materials during 200kbar shocks developed in 200fs.

The idea of synthesizing quantum electrodynamics (QED) and the kinetic theory of plasmas?rst occurred to me in the early 1970s [1, 2]. The project to do so has been carried out bit by bit over the subsequent years. The name “quantum plasmadynamics” (QPD) is my own jargon [3] for the synthesized theory. Both QED and the kinetic theory of plasmas areconcerned with the int- action between charged particles and the electromagnetic?eld, but they are radically di?erent in the way the interaction is described. The kinetic theory of plasmas is a collective-medium theory: a plasma is not a collection of - dependent particles in a given electromagnetic?eld, but a medium in which the particles collectively modify the?eld, and the?eld modi?es the par- cles. The charge and current densities associated with the particles are part of a self-consistent?eld. Conventionally, the kinetic theory of plasmas is a classical theory: the motions of particles are treated using classical dynamics.

An outgrowth of a workshop held by the Community of European Solar Radio Astronomers (CESRA), this volume collects reviews on current research and perspectives on the variable solar corona: high-energy particles, large-scale disturbances such as mass ejections and waves, and radio diagnostics of the coronal plasma. Multiwavelength observations of the Sun with radio instruments and recent space missions are drawn on extensively, as well as input from neighbouring fields e.g. solar wind, Earth's bow shock. Recent developments are discussed alongside key developments in this rapidly evolving field.

As part of the Physics 2010 decadal survey project, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation requested that the National Research Council assess the opportunities, over roughly the next decade, in atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) science and technology. In particular, the National Research Council was asked to cover the state of AMO science, emphasizing recent accomplishments and identifying new and compelling scientific questions. Controlling the Quantum World, discusses both the roles and challenges for AMO science in instrumentation; scientific research near absolute zero; development of extremely intense x-ray and laser sources; exploration and control of molecular processes; photonics at the nanoscale level; and development of quantum information technology. This book also offers an assessment of and recommendations about critical issues concerning maintaining U.S. leadership in AMO science and technology.

While the basic operating principles of Helical Magnetic Flux Compression Generators are easy to understand, the details of their construction and performance limits have been described only in government reports, many of them classified. Conferences in the field of flux compression are also dominated by contributions from government (US and foreign) laboratories. And the government-sponsored research has usually been concerned with very large generators with explosive charges that require elaborate facilities and safety arrangements. This book emphasizes research into small generators (less than 500 grams of high explosives) and explains in detail the physical fundamentals, construction details, and parameter-variation effects related to them.

This book is primarily intended to accompany an advanced undergraduate course in atomic physics. However, the elementary atomic physics covered in the early chapters should be accessible to undergraduates when they are first introduced to the subject. The book describes some of the latest advances and the applications to Bose-Einstein condensation of atoms, matter-wave interferometry and quantum computing with trapped ions. To complement the usual quantum mechanical treatment of atomic structure the book strongly emphasizes the experimental basis of the subject, especially in the later chapters.

Intended for advanced students of physics, chemistry, and related disciplines, this text treats the quantum theory of atoms and ions within the framework of self-consistent fields. It treats the structure and spectra of atoms and ions, their behavior in external fields, and their interactions, including collisions. Data needed for the analysis of collisions and other atomic processes are also included, making the book useful as a reference for researchers as well as students. In the main text, simple and convincing methods are used to explain the fundamental properties of atoms, molecules, and clusters; details and more advanced aspects of these topics are treated in the problems at the end of each chapter. The first part of the book is devoted to properties of atoms and ions considered as quantum systems of electrons orbiting a heavy Coulomb center. Self-consistent fields and the shell model give a logical and consistent picture, and provide reliable models for the analysis of atomic properties. The second part deals with interactions and collisions of particles -- including bound systems, such as molecules, clusters, and solids. The aim here is to relate the internal structure of the atoms to the interactions between them, providing useful insights for applications; the accompanying data in tables, charts, and spectra complement the theoretical discussion.

The aim of this book is to provide the reader with a coherent and updated comprehensive treatise that covers the central subjects of the field. The style and content is suitable both for students and researchers. Highlights of the book include (among many others) the Ion-Sphere model, statistical models, Average-Atom model, emission spectrum, unresolved transition arrays, supertransition arrays, radiation transport, escape factors and x-ray lasers.

Thin Films from Free Atoms and Particles is an eight-chapter text that describes the primary reaction modes of atoms or coordination-deficient particles. This book presents first an introduction to free atoms and particles, followed by a chapter describing the embryonic growth of films, such as dimers, trimers, and other small telomers formed and detected. The next chapters discuss the understanding of discharge processes for forming free atoms and particles. The remaining chapters deal with the technology, techniques, and materials in thin films. Physicists, engineers, materials scientists, and chemists will find this book of great value.

Advances in Atomic and Molecular Physics