Coherent Dynamics of Complex Quantum Systems is aimed at senior-level undergraduate students in the areas of atomic, molecular, and laser physics, physical chemistry, quantum optics and quantum informatics. It should help them put particular problems in these fields into a broader scientific context and thereby take advantage of the well-elaborated technique of the adjacent fields.
This volume is based on lectures given during the program Complex Quantum Systems held at the National University of Singapore's Institute for Mathematical Sciences from 17 February to 27 March 2010. It guides the reader through two introductory expositions on large Coulomb systems to five of the most important developments in the field: derivation of mean field equations, derivation of effective Hamiltonians, alternative high precision methods in quantum chemistry, modern many body methods originating from quantum information, and - the most complex - semirelativistic quantum electrodynamics. These introductions are written by leaders in their fields; amongst them are Volker Bach, Rafael Benguria, Thomas Chen, and Jan Philip Solovej. Together, they fill a gap between current textbooks and the vast modern literature on complex quantum systems.
Quantum tunneling is an intriguing phenomenon arising in a multitude of physical contexts. New experiments in systems as wide ranging as superdeformed nuclei, Bose-Einstein condensed gases, and nanomagnetic systems are spurring theoretical studies into the fundamental nature of tunneling. In this volume, the articles include: (i) tunneling out of a metastable state, (ii) coherence between two wells in tunneling contact, (iii) the consequences of the nature of the underlying dynamics (i.e. regular motion, chaos or some mixture) in low-dimensional systems and its connection to newly identified tunneling phenomena such as chaos-assisted tunneling, (iv) nanomagnetic systems with focus on comparing environmental descriptions of nuclear spins and oscillators, (v) solitons in Bose condensates, (vi) tunneling out of the nuclear superdeformed well and its use as a probe of pairing and chaos in excited nuclear states, and (vii) problems linked to the Bose condensed phase of atomic alkali gases.These subjects and others are gathered in six pedagogical courses given during the spring of 1997 at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics program “Tunneling in complex systems”. The purpose of the courses was to give graduate students and postdoctoral researchers exposure to a sampling of such recent theoretical advances and experimental contexts of tunneling as well as a bridge for the communication gaps between researchers in the various fields concerned with tunneling.
This volume is based on lectures given during the program Complex Quantum Systems held at the National University of Singapore's Institute for Mathematical Sciences from 17 February to 27 March 2010. It guides the reader through two introductory expositions on large Coulomb systems to five of the most important developments in the field: derivation of mean field equations, derivation of effective Hamiltonians, alternative high precision methods in quantum chemistry, modern many body methods originating from quantum information, and OCo the most complex OCo semirelativistic quantum electrodynamics.These introductions are written by leaders in their fields; amongst them are Volker Bach, Rafael Benguria, Thomas Chen, and Jan Philip Solovej. Together, they fill a gap between current textbooks and the vast modern literature on complex quantum systems.
This book gathers together a range of similar problems that can be encountered in different fields of modern quantum physics and that have common features with regard to multilevel quantum systems. The main motivation was to examine from a uniform standpoint various models and approaches that have been developed in atomic, molecular, condensed matter, chemical, laser and nuclear physics in various contexts. The book should help senior-level undergraduate, graduate students and researchers putting particular problems in these fields into a broader scientific context and thereby taking advantage of well-established techniques used in adjacent fields. This second edition has been expanded to include substantial new material (e.g. new sections on Dynamic Localization and on Euclidean Random Matrices and new chapters on Entanglement, Open Quantum Systems, and Coherence Protection). It is based on the author’s lectures at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, at the CNRS Aimé Cotton Laboratory, and on other courses he has given over the last two decades.
In the last two decades remarkable progress has been made in understanding and describing tunneling processes in complex systems in terms of classical trajectories. This book introduces recent concepts and achievements with particular emphasis on a dynamical formulation and relations to specific systems in mesoscopic, molecular, and atomic physics. Advanced instanton techniques, e.g. for decay rates and tunnel splittings, are discussed in the first part. The second part covers current developments for wave-packet tunneling in real-time, and the third part describes thermodynamics and dynamical approaches for barrier transmission in statistical, particularly dissipative systems.
Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to these questions. Wilson argues that there are two, and only two, forms of metaphysical emergence of the sort seemingly at issue in the target cases: 'Weak' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a proper subset of the powers of the feature upon which it depends, and 'Strong' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a power not had by the feature upon which it depends. Weak emergence unifies and illuminates seemingly diverse accounts of non-reductive physicalism; Strong emergence does the same as regards seemingly diverse anti-physicalist views positing fundamental novelty at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending the in-principle viability of each form of emergence, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that there is Strong emergence in the important case of free will.
This book is a collection of articles on the contemporary status of quantum mechanics, dedicated to the fundamental issues of entanglement, decoherence, irreversibility, information processing, and control of quantum evolution, with a view of possible applications. It has multidisciplinary character and is addressed at a broad readership in physics, computer science, chemistry, and electrical engineering. It is written by the world-leading experts in pertinent fields such as quantum computing, atomic, molecular and optical physics, condensed matter physics, and statistical physics.
A quantum origin of life? -- Quantum mechanics and emergence -- Quantum coherence and the search for the first replicator -- Ultrafast quantum dynamics in photosynthesis -- Modelling quantum decoherence in biomolecules -- Molecular evolution -- Memory depends on the cytoskeleton, but is it quantum? -- Quantum metabolism and allometric scaling relations in biology -- Spectroscopy of the genetic code -- Towards understanding the origin of genetic languages -- Can arbitrary quantum systems undergo self-replication? -- A semi-quantum version of the game of life -- Evolutionary stability in quantum games -- Quantum transmemetic intelligence -- Dreams versus reality : plenary debate session on quantum computing -- Plenary debate: quantum effects in biology : trivial or not? -- Nontrivial quantum effects in biology : a skeptical physicists' view -- That's life! : the geometry of p electron clouds.
