Time in Quantum Mechanics - Vol. 2

ISBN-13: 9783642031731 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 423 str.

Gonzalo Muga; A. Ruschhaupt; A. Del Campo

Opis

But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time. W. H. Auden It is hard to think of a subject as rich, complex, and important as time. From the practical point of view it governs and organizes our lives (most of us are after all attached to a wrist watch) or it helps us to wonderfully ?nd our way in unknown territory with the global positioning system (GPS). More generally it constitutes the heartbeat of modern technology. Time is the most precisely measured quantity, so the second de?nes the meter or the volt and yet, nobody knows for sure what it is, puzzling philosophers, artists, priests, and scientists for centuries as one of the enduring enigmas of all cultures. Indeed time is full of contrasts: taken for granted in daily life, it requires sophisticated experimental and theoretical treatments to be accurately produced. We are trapped in its web, and it actually kills us all, but it also constitutes the stuff we need to progress and realize our objectives. There is nothing more boring and monotonous than the tick-tock of a clock, but how many fascinating challenges have physicists met to realize that monotony: Quite a number of Nobel Prize winners have been directly motivated by them or have contributed 1 signi?cantly to time measurement."

Spis treści

Memories of Old Times: Schlick and Reichenbach on Time in Quantum Mechanics.- The Time-Dependent Schr#x00F6;dinger Equation Revisited: Quantum Optical and Classical Maxwell Routes to Schr#x00F6;dinger#x2019;s Wave Equation.- Post Pauli#x2019;s Theorem Emerging Perspective on Time in Quantum Mechanics.- Detector Models for the Quantum Time of Arrival.- Dwell-Time Distributions in Quantum Mechanics.- The Quantum Jump Approach and Some of Its Applications.- Causality in Superluminal Pulse Propagation.- Experiments on Quantum Transport of Ultra-Cold Atoms in Optical Potentials.- Quantum Post-Exponential Decay.- Timescales in Quantum Open Systems: Dynamics of Time Correlation Functions and Stochastic Quantum Trajectory Methods in Non-Markovian Systems.- Double-Slit Experiments in the Time Domain.- Optimal Time Evolution for Hermitian and Non-Hermitian Hamiltonians.- Atomic Clocks.

Blurb

The treatment of time in quantum mechanics continues to be a key challenge in the foundation of quantum theory. This book follows Time in Quantum Mechanics—Volume 1 and is the second volume to detail the problems, attempts and achievements in defining, formalizing and measuring different time quantities in quantum theory. It touches upon numerous related issues as well.

Time in Quantum Mechanics—Volume 2 opens with a brief historical overview. It then offers eleven tutorial reviews which cover many open questions regarding fundamental concepts and time observables as well as a number of quantum dynamical effects and their associated characteristic time scales. In addition, the volume contains a tutorial review on atomic clocks that explains that while we do not know what time is, we know very well how to measure it with exceptional accuracy.

Thorough and lucid, this book is written as an introductory guide for newcomers to the subject. However, it is also useful as a reference for  the expert.