"New physics" is an appealing new keyword, not yet devalued by the ravages of inflation. But what has this to do with such an ugly field as plasma physics, steeped in classical physics, mostly outworn, with all its unsolved and ambiguous technological problems and its messy and open ended numerical studies? "New physics" is concerned with quarks, Higgs particles, grand unified theory, super- strings, gravitational waves, and the profound basics of cosmology and black holes. It is the field of astonishing quantum effects, demonstrated by the von Klitzing effect and high- temperature...

This book is devoted to the analysis of approximate solution techniques for differential equations, based on classical orthogonal polynomials. These techniques are popularly known as spectral methods. In the last few decades, there has been a growing interest in this subject. As a matter offact, spectral methods provide a competitive alternative to other standard approximation techniques, for a large variety of problems. Initial ap plications were concerned with the investigation of periodic solutions of boundary value problems using trigonometric polynomials. Subsequently, the analysis was...

Mainly drawing on explicit examples, the author introduces the reader to themost recent techniques to study finite and infinite dynamical systems. Without any knowledge of differential geometry or lie groups theory the student can follow in a series of case studies the most recent developments. r-matrices for Calogero-Moser systems and Toda lattices are derived. Lax pairs for nontrivial infinite dimensionalsystems are constructed as limits of classical matrix algebras. The reader will find explanations of the approach to integrable field theories, to spectral transform methods and to...

Particles with fractional statistics interpolating between bosons and fermions have attracted considerable interest from mathematical physicists. In recent years it has emerged that these so-called anyons have rather unexpected applications, such as the fractional Hall effect, anyonic excitations in films of liquid helium, and high-temrperature superconductivity. Furthermore, they are discussed also in the context of conformal field theories. This book is a systematic and pedagogical introduction that considers the subject of anyons from many different points of view. In particular, the...

Astronomy as well as molecular physics describe non-relativistic motion by an interaction of the same form: By Newton's respectively by Coulomb's potential. But whereas the fundamental laws of motion thus have a simple form, the n-body problem withstood (for n > 2) all attempts of an explicit solution. Indeed, the studies of Poincare at the end of the last century lead to the conclusion that such an explicit solution should be impossible. Poincare himselfopened a new epoch for rational mechanics by asking qual- itative questions like the one about the stability of the solar system. To a...

In solid-state physics especially topological techniques have turned out to be extremely useful for modelling and explaining physical properties of matter. This book illustrates various applications of algebraic topology in classical field theory (non-linear sigma-models) and in quantizationsin multiply connected spaces (anyons). It treats Chern-Simon Lagrangians, Berry's phase, the polarization of light and the fractional quantum Hall effect.

The history of critical phenomena goes back to the year 1869 when Andrews discovered the critical point of carbon dioxide, located at about 31 C and 73 atmospheres pressure. In the neighborhood ofthis point the carbon dioxide was observed to become opalescent, that is, light is strongly scattered. This is nowadays interpreted as comingfrom the strong fluctuations of the system close to the critical point. Subsequently, a wide varietyofphysicalsystems were realized to display critical points as well. Ofparticular importance was the observation of a critical point in ferromagnetic iron by...

This volume contains ten lectures presented in the series ULB Lectures in Nonlinear Optics at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles during the period October 28 to November 4, 1991. A large part of the first six lectures is taken from material prepared for a book of somewhat larger scope which will be published, by Springer under the title Quantum Statistical Methods in Quantum Optics. The principal reason for the early publication of the present volume concerns the material contained in the last four lectures. Here I have put together, in a more or less systematic way, some ideas about the use...

These lecture notes are an introduction to several ideas and applications of noncommutative geometry. It starts with a not necessarily commutative but associative algebra which is thought of as the algebra of functions on some 'virtual noncommutative space'. Attention is switched from spaces, which in general do not even exist, to algebras of functions. In these notes, particular emphasis is put on seeing noncommutative spaces as concrete spaces, namely as a collection of points with a topology. The necessary mathematical tools are presented in a systematic and accessible way and include...

In 1991, my newly formed researchgroupat Berkeley was working intensely in the area of continuum-level constitutive relationships that could be obtained in a deductive mannerfrom microstructuralinformationthroughthemethods of homogenization theory. Of particular interest was the application of such methods to structural problems in the blossoming field of micromechanical devices. In this context it was becoming evident that we needed to learn to navigate through the continuum/discrete interface. Such were the circumstances when Vladimir Granik came to visit us at Berkeley for the first time....