The International Congress on Mathematical Physics is the flagship conference in this exciting field. Convening every three years, it gives a survey on the progress achieved in all branches of mathematical physics. It also provides a superb platform to discuss challenges and new ideas. The present volume collects material from the XVIth ICMP which was held in Prague, August 2009, and features most of the plenary lectures and invited lectures in topical sessions as well as information on other parts of the congress program. This volume provides a broad coverage of the field of mathematical physics, from dominantly mathematical subjects to particle physics, condensed matter, and application of mathematical physics methods in various areas such as astrophysics and ecology, amongst others.
This is an in-depth study of not just about Tan Kah-kee, but also the making of a legend through his deeds, self-sacrifices, fortitude and foresight. This revised edition sheds new light on his political agonies in Mao's China over campaigns against capitalists and intellectuals.
Ludwig Faddeev is widely recognized as one of the titans of 20th century mathematical physics. His fundamental contributions to scattering theory, quantum gauge theories, and the theory of classical and quantum completely integrable systems played a key role in shaping modern mathematical physics.Ludwig Faddeev's major achievements include the solution of the three-body problem in quantum mechanics, the mathematical formulation of quantum gauge theories and corresponding Feynman rules, Hamiltonian and algebraic methods in mathematical physics, with applications to gauge theories with anomalies, quantum systems with constraints and solitons, the discovery of the algebraic structure of classical and quantum integrable systems and quantum groups, and solitons with the topology of knots.Faddeev's name is imprinted in many areas of mathematics and theoretical physics, including 'Faddeev's equations' and 'Faddeev's Green function' in scattering theory, 'Faddeev-Popov ghosts' and 'Faddeev-Popov determinant' in gauge theories, 'Gardner-Faddeev-Zakharov bracket' for the KdV equation, 'Faddeev-Zamolodchikov algebra' in quantum integrable systems, 'Faddeev-Reshetikhin-Takhtajan construction' in the theory of quantum groups, knotted solitons in the 'Skyrme-Faddeev model' and many others.Ludwig Faddeev founded the St. Petersburg school of modern mathematical physics and distinguished himself by serving the mathematics community for over three decades including his leadership of the International Mathematical Union in the period of 1986-1990. He was conferred numerous prizes and memberships of prestigious institutions in recognition of the importance of his work. These include the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, the Dirac Medal, the Max Planck Medal, the Shaw Prize and the Lomonosov Gold Medal among others.A gathering of contributions from some of the biggest names in mathematics and physics, this volume serves as a tribute to this legendary figure. Volume contributors include: Fields medalist Sir Michael Atiyah, Jürg Fröhlich, Roman Jackiw, Vladimir Korepin, Nikita Nekrasov, André Neveu, Alexander M Polyakov, Samson Shatashvili, Fedor Smirnov as well as Nobel laureates Frank Wilczek and C N Yang.
The Proceedings of the ICM publishes the talks, by invited speakers, at the conference organized by the International Mathematical Union every 4 years. It covers several areas of Mathematics and it includes the Fields Medal and Nevanlinna, Gauss and Leelavati Prizes and the Chern Medal laudatios.
This Element provides an entry point for philosophical engagement with quantization and the classical limit. It introduces the mathematical tools of C*-algebras as they are used to compare classical and quantum physics. It then employs those tools to investigate philosophical issues surrounding theory change in physics. It discusses examples in which quantization bears on the topics of reduction, structural continuity, analogical reasoning, and theory construction. In doing so, it demonstrates that the precise mathematical tools of algebraic quantum theory can aid philosophers of science and philosophers of physics.
New scientific paradigms typically consist of an expansion of the conceptual language with which we describe the world. Over the past decade, theoretical physics and quantum information theory have turned to category theory to model and reason about quantum protocols. This new use of categorical and algebraic tools allows a more conceptual and insightful expression of elementary events such as measurements, teleportation and entanglement operations, that were obscured in previous formalisms. Recent work in natural language semantics has begun to use these categorical methods to relate grammatical analysis and semantic representations in a unified framework for analysing language meaning, and learning meaning from a corpus. A growing body of literature on the use of categorical methods in quantum information theory and computational linguistics shows both the need and opportunity for new research on the relation between these categorical methods and the abstract notion of information flow. This book supplies an overview of how categorical methods are used to model information flow in both physics and linguistics. It serves as an introduction to this interdisciplinary research, and provides a basis for future research and collaboration between the different communities interested in applying category theoretic methods to their domain's open problems.
The International Congress on Mathematical Physics is the flagship conference in this exciting field. Convening every three years, it gives a survey on the progress achieved in all branches of mathematical physics. It also provides a superb platform to discuss challenges and new ideas. The present volume collects material from the XVIth ICMP which was held in Prague, August 2009, and features most of the plenary lectures and invited lectures in topical sessions as well as information on other parts of the congress program. This volume provides a broad coverage of the field of mathematical physics, from dominantly mathematical subjects to particle physics, condensed matter, and application of mathematical physics methods in various areas such as astrophysics and ecology, amongst others.
This book pedagogically describes recent developments in gauge theory, in particular four-dimensional N = 2 supersymmetric gauge theory, in relation to various fields in mathematics, including algebraic geometry, geometric representation theory, vertex operator algebras. The key concept is the instanton, which is a solution to the anti-self-dual Yang–Mills equation in four dimensions. In the first part of the book, starting with the systematic description of the instanton, how to integrate out the instanton moduli space is explained together with the equivariant localization formula. It is then illustrated that this formalism is generalized to various situations, including quiver and fractional quiver gauge theory, supergroup gauge theory. The second part of the book is devoted to the algebraic geometric description of supersymmetric gauge theory, known as the Seiberg–Witten theory, together with string/M-theory point of view. Based on its relation to integrable systems, how to quantize such a geometric structure via the Ω-deformation of gauge theory is addressed. The third part of the book focuses on the quantum algebraic structure of supersymmetric gauge theory. After introducing the free field realization of gauge theory, the underlying infinite dimensional algebraic structure is discussed with emphasis on the connection with representation theory of quiver, which leads to the notion of quiver W-algebra. It is then clarified that such a gauge theory construction of the algebra naturally gives rise to further affinization and elliptic deformation of W-algebra.
Marcel Grossmann Meetings are formed to further the development of General Relativity by promoting theoretical understanding in the fields of physics, mathematics, astronomy and astrophysics and to direct future technological, observational, and experimental efforts. In these meetings are discussed recent developments in classical and quantum gravity, general relativity and relativistic astrophysics, with major emphasis on mathematical foundations and physical predictions, with the main objective of gathering scientists from diverse backgrounds for deepening the understanding of spacetime structure and reviewing the status of test-experiments for Einstein's theory of gravitation. The range of topics is broad, going from the more abstract classical theory, quantum gravity and strings, to the more concrete relativistic astrophysics observations and modeling.The three volumes of the proceedings of MG12 give a broad view of all aspects of gravitational physics and astrophysics, from mathematical issues to recent observations and experiments. The scientific program of the meeting includes 29 plenary talks stretched over 6 mornings, and 74 parallel sessions over 5 afternoons. Volume A contains plenary and review talks ranging from the mathematical foundations of classical and quantum gravitational theories including recent developments in string theories, to precision tests of general relativity including progress towards the detection of gravitational waves, to relativistic astrophysics including such topics as gamma ray bursts, black hole physics both in our galaxy, in active galactic nuclei and in other galaxies, neutron stars, pulsar astrophysics, gravitational lensing effects, neutrino physics and ultra high energy cosmic rays. The rest of the volumes include parallel sessions on dark matter, neutrinos, X-ray sources, astrophysical black holes, neutron stars, binary systems, radiative transfer, accretion disks, alternative gravitational theories, perturbations of collapsed objects, analog models, black hole thermodynamics, cosmic background radiation & observational cosmology, numerical relativity & algebraic computing, gravitational lensing, variable ';constants'; of nature, large scale structure, topology of the universe, brane-world cosmology, early universe models & cosmic microwave background anisotropies, inhomogeneous cosmology, inflation, gamma ray burst modeling, supernovas, global structure, singularities, cosmic censorship, chaos, Einstein-Maxwell systems, inertial forces, gravitomagnetism, wormholes & time machines, exact solutions of Einstein's equations, gravitational waves, gravitational wave detectors & data analysis, precision gravitational measurements, history of relativity, quantum gravity & loop quantum gravity, Casimir effect, quantum cosmology, strings & branes, self-gravitating systems, gamma ray astronomy, cosmic rays, gamma ray bursts and quasars.
This volume contains surveys as well as research articles broadly centered on spectral analysis. Topics range from spectral continuity for magnetic and pseudodifferential operators to localization in random media, from the stability of matter to properties of Aharonov-Bohm and Quantum Hall Hamiltonians, from waveguides and resonances to supersymmetric models and dissipative fermion systems. This is the first of a series of volumes reporting every two years on recent progress in spectral theory.
