This book deals mainly with gravitational physics and its application to the very early universe and models for relativistic objects. It reviews our present knowledge about the origin and formation of large-scale structure, quantum cosmology and some problems of observational cosmology. Experimental tests of general relativity, gravitational wave astrophysics and string theory complete the lists of themes in this volume which contains invited and contributed papers.
This volume contains up-to-date accounts of many of the latest developments in gravitation, cosmology and astrophysics, including papers on black hole radiation, empirical tests of gravitational theory, quantum gravity, classical and quantum cosmology, singularities, computational methods, and a number of other topics. The keynote speakers include S Carlip, M Haugan, A Linde, D Page, G Papini, K Schleich, P Szekeres, G Starkman and J York.
In many ways the last decade has witnessed a surge of interest in the interplay between theoretical physics and some traditional areas of pure mathematics. This book contains the lectures delivered at the NATO-ASI Summer School on `Recent Problems in Mathematical Physics' held at Salamanca, Spain (1992), offering a pedagogical and updated approach to some of the problems that have been at the heart of these events. Among them, we should mention the new mathematical structures related to integrability and quantum field theories, such as quantum groups, conformal field theories, integrable statistical models, and topological quantum field theories, that are discussed at length by some of the leading experts on the areas in several of the lectures contained in the book. Apart from these, traditional and new problems in quantum gravity are reviewed. Other contributions to the School included in the book range from symmetries in partial differential equations to geometrical phases in quantum physics. The book is addressed to researchers in the fields covered, PhD students and any scientist interested in obtaining an updated view of the subjects.
We say that the processes going on in the world about us are asymmetric in time or display an arrow of time. Yet this manifest fact of our experience is particularly difficult to explain in terms of the fundamental laws of physics. This volume reconciles these profoundly conflicting facts.
