The first few months of the universe, the MIT bag model, and grand unified theories are among the chief concerns of these essays and articles honoring MIT theoretical physicist Francis Low. The book opens with a cluster of dedicatory pieces by Murray Gell-Mann, Marvin L. Goldberger, Jeremy Bernstein, and Val L. Fitch. The remainder of the book consists of twenty technical essays by a small galaxy of distinguished scientists: Steven Weinberg; Kenneth A. Johnson; Sidney Drell; Geoffrey F. Chew; Mitchell J. Feigenbaum; Victor F. Weisskopf; Herman Feshbach; Carleton DeTar; John F. Donoghue; D. Danckaert, P. DeCausmaecker, R. Gastmans, W. Troost, and Tai Tsun Wu, writing jointly; Roman Jackiw; William I. Weisberger; Adrian Patrascioiu; Gino Segre; So-Young Î Asim Yildiz; Jogesh C. Pati, Abdus Salam, and J. Strathdee, in another collaborative contribution; and the three editors. Among the other topics are &"Why the Renormalization Group Is a Good Thing&" - the physics of asymptotic freedom - the topological bootstrap &"The Fixed Point of Classical Dynamical Evolution and Chaos&" - compound bags and hadron-hadron interactions - &"Gauge Invariance and Mass&" - Gribov ambiguities - &"The Simple Facts about the Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe&" - preons and supersymmetry - some speculations on the origin of the matter, energy, and entropy of the universe - the Chew-Low theory and the quark model - &"From Gell-Mann-Low to Unification.&" The editors are all affiliated with the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT.

This is the first volume of a modern introduction to quantum field theory which addresses both mathematicians and physicists, at levels ranging from advanced undergraduate students to professional scientists. The book bridges the acknowledged gap between the different languages used by mathematicians and physicists. For students of mathematics the author shows that detailed knowledge of the physical background helps to motivate the mathematical subjects and to discover interesting interrelationships between quite different mathematical topics. For students of physics, fairly advanced mathematics is presented, which goes beyond the usual curriculum in physics.

This book consists of reviews covering all aspects of quantum chromodynamics as we know it today. The articles have been written by recognized experts in this field, in honor of the 75th birthday of Professor Boris Ioffe. Combining features of a handbook and a textbook, this is the most comprehensive source of information on the present status of QCD. It is intended for students as well as physicists — both theorists and experimentalists.Each review is self-contained and pedagogically structured, providing the general formulation of the problem, telling where it stands with respect to other issues and why it is interesting and important, presenting the history of the subject, qualitative insights, and so on. The first part of the book is historical in nature. It includes, among other articles, Boris Ioffe's and Yuri Orlov's memoirs on high energy physics in the 1950's, a note by B V Geshkenbein on Ioffe's career in particle physics, and an essay on the discovery of asymptotic freedom written by David Gross.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the state of the art in the philosophy of physics. It comprisess 54 self-contained chapters written by leading philosophers of physics at both senior and junior levels, making it the most thorough and detailed volume of its type on the market – nearly every major perspective in the field is represented. The Companion’s 54 chapters are organized into 12 parts. The first seven parts cover all of the major physical theories investigated by philosophers of physics today, and the last five explore key themes that unite the study of these theories. I. Newtonian Mechanics II. Special Relativity III. General Relativity IV. Non-Relativistic Quantum Theory V. Quantum Field Theory VI. Quantum Gravity VII. Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics VIII. Explanation IX. Intertheoretic Relations X. Symmetries XI. Metaphysics XII. Cosmology The difficulty level of the chapters has been carefully pitched so as to offer both accessible summaries for those new to philosophy of physics and standard reference points for active researchers on the front lines. An introductory chapter by the editors maps out the field, and each part also begins with a short summary that places the individual chapters in context. The volume will be indispensable to any serious student or scholar of philosophy of physics.

Introduction / M. Shifman -- Introducing Boris Ioffe / B.V. Geshkenbein -- Boris Lazarevich Ioffe is 75 / I.B. Khriplovich -- ch. 1. Pages of the past. A top secret assignment / B.L. Ioffe. Editor's comments. Snapshots from the 1950's / Yu. F. Orlov -- ch. 2. The making of QCD. Quantizing the Yang-Mills field / L.D. Faddeev. The discovery of asymptotic freedom and the emergence of QCD / D.J. Gross. Editor's note. Recollections on dimensional regularization and related topics / C.G. Bollini. Historical curiosity: how asymptotic freedom of the Yang-Mills theory could have been discovered three times before Gross, Wilczek, and politzer, but was not / M. Shifman -- ch. 3. From hadrons to nuclei: crossing the border / S.R. Beane [und weitere] -- ch. 4. Chiral dynamics / H. Leutwyler -- ch. 5. Aspects of chiral symmetry / A. Smilga -- ch. 6. Nucleons as chiral solitons / D. Diakonov and V. Yu. Petrov -- ch. 7. Chiral QCD: baryon dynamics / U. MeiBner -- ch. 8. Hadrons in the 1/N expansion / A.V. Manohar -- ch. 9. QCD inequalities / S. Nussinov -- ch. 10. Regge poles in QCD / A.B. Kaidalov -- ch. 11. Small x physics and the colored glass condensate / L. McLerran -- ch. 12. On Gribov's ideas on confinement / A. Vainshtein -- ch. 13. QCD in a finite volume / P. van Baal -- ch. 14. Compact variables and singular fields in QCD / F. Lenz and S. Wörlen -- ch. 15. Instanton-induced effects in QCD / E.V. Shuryak -- ch. 16. Perturbative QCD and the parton structure of the nucleon / W.-K. Tung -- ch. 17. Multiloop evolution of the QCD coupling constant and quark masses / K.G. Chetyrkin -- ch. 18. Multi-parton amplitudes in QCD / Z. Bern -- ch. 19. Generalized parton distributions / A. Radyushkin -- ch. 20. Analytical QCD and multiparticle production / V.A. Khoze, W. Ochs and J. Wosiek -- ch. 21. Space-time picture of high energy scattering / H.G. Dosch -- ch. 22. High-energy QCD and Wilson lines / I. Balitsky -- ch. 23. Exclusive processes in quantum chromodynamics and the light-cone Fock representation / S.J. Brodsky -- ch. 24. Quark-hadron duality / M. Shifman -- ch. 25. QCD sum rules, a modern perspective / P. Colangelo and A. Khodjamirian -- ch. 26. Topics in the heavy quark expansion / N. Uraltsev -- ch. 27. Weak decays of heavy quarks / F. De Fazio -- ch. 28. Renormalons and power corrections / M. Beneke and V.M. Braun -- ch. 29. Confinement, magnetic Z[symbol] symmetry and low-energy effective theory of gluodynamics / A. Kovner -- ch. 30. Flux tubes and confinement in the Seiberg-Witten theory: lessons for QCD / A. Yung -- ch. 31. Millennial messages for QCD from the superworld and from the string / M.J. Strassler -- ch. 32. The center symmetry and its spontaneous breakdown at high temperature / K. Holland and U.-J. Wiese -- ch. 33. 2D model field theories and finite temperature and density / V. Schön and M. Thies -- ch. 34. Hot and dense QCD / A.V. Smilga -- ch. 35. The condensed matter physics of QCD / K. Rajagopal and F. Wilczek

Multi-author volume on the history and philosophy of physics.

In this book a detailed and systematic treatment of asymptotic methods in the theory of plates and shells is presented. The main features of the book are the basic principles of asymptotics and their applications, traditional approaches such as regular and singular perturbations, as well as new approaches such as the composite equations approach. The book introduces the reader to the field of asymptotic simplification of the problems of the theory of plates and shells and will be useful as a handbook of methods of asymptotic integration. Providing a state-of-the-art review of asymptotic applications, this book will be useful as an introduction to the field for novices as well as a reference book for specialists.

This Oxford Handbook provides an overview of many of the topics that currently engage philosophers of physics. It surveys new issues and the problems that have become a focus of attention in recent years. It also provides up-to-date discussions of the still very important problems that dominated the field in the past. In the late 20th Century, the philosophy of physics was largely focused on orthodox Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory. The measurement problem, the question of the possibility of hidden variables, and the nature of quantum locality dominated the literature on the quantum mechanics, whereas questions about relationalism vs. substantivalism, and issues about underdetermination of theories dominated the literature on spacetime. These issues still receive considerable attention from philosophers, but many have shifted their attentions to other questions related to quantum mechanics and to spacetime theories. Quantum field theory has become a major focus, particularly from the point of view of algebraic foundations. Concurrent with these trends, there has been a focus on understanding gauge invariance and symmetries. The philosophy of physics has evolved even further in recent years with attention being paid to theories that, for the most part, were largely ignored in the past. For example, the relationship between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics—-once thought to be a paradigm instance of unproblematic theory reduction—-is now a hotly debated topic. The implicit, and sometimes explicit, reductionist methodology of both philosophers and physicists has been severely criticized and attention has now turned to the explanatory and descriptive roles of "non-fundamental,'' phenomenological theories. This shift of attention includes "old'' theories such as classical mechanics, once deemed to be of little philosophical interest. Furthermore, some philosophers have become more interested in "less fundamental'' contemporary physics such as condensed matter theory. Questions abound with implications for the nature of models, idealizations, and explanation in physics. This Handbook showcases all these aspects of this complex and dynamic discipline.

Doing Physics makes concepts of physics easier to grasp by relating them to everyday knowledge. Addressing some of the models and metaphors that physicists use to explain the physical world, Martin H. Krieger describes the conceptual world of physics by means of analogies to economics, anthropology, theater, carpentry, mechanisms such as clockworks, and machine tool design. The interaction of elementary particles or chemical species, for example, can be related to the theory of kinship—who can marry whom is like what can interact with what. Likewise, the description of physical situations in terms of interdependent particles and fields is analogous to the design of a factory with its division of labor among specialists. For the new edition, Krieger has revised the text and added a chapter on the role of mathematics and formal models in physics. Doing Physics will be of special interest to economists, political theorists, anthropologists, and sociologists as well as philosophers of science.