Starting with numerical algorithms resulting in new kinds of amazing fractal patterns on the sphere, this book describes the theory underlying these phenomena and indicates possible future applications. The book also explores the following questions:

1. Introduction -- 2. What are quantum fractals? 2.1. Cantor set. 2.2. Iterated function systems. 2.3. Cantor set throughmatrix eigenvector. 2.4. Quantum iterated function systems. 2.5. Example: The "impossible" quantum fractal. 2.6. Action on the plane. 2.7 Lorentz group, SL(2,C), and relativistic aberration -- 3. Examples. 3.1. Hyperbolic quantum fractals. 3.2. Controlling chaotic behavior and fractal dimension. 3.3. Quantum fractals on n-spheres. 3.4. Algorithms for generating hyperbolic quantum fractals -- 4. Foundational questions. 4.1. Stochastic nature of quantum measurement processes. 4.2. Are there quantum jumps? 4.3. Bohmian mechanics. 4.4. Event enhanced quantum theory. 4.5. Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber spontaneous localization. 4.6. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and quantum fractals. 4.7. Are quantum fractals real?

Butterfly in the Quantum World by Indu Satija, with contributions by Douglas Hofstadter, is the first book ever to tell the story of the "Hofstadter butterfly", a beautiful and fascinating graph lying at the heart of the quantum theory of matter. The butterfly came out of a simple-sounding question: What happens if you immerse a crystal in a magnetic field? What energies can the electrons take on? From 1930 onwards, physicists struggled to answer this question, until 1974, when graduate student Douglas Hofstadter discovered that the answer was a graph consisting of nothing but copies of itself nested down infinitely many times. This wild mathematical object caught the physics world totally by surprise, and it continues to mesmerize physicists and mathematicians today. The butterfly plot is intimately related to many other important phenomena in number theory and physics, including Apollonian gaskets, the Foucault pendulum, quasicrystals, the quantum Hall effect, and many more. Its story reflects the magic, the mystery, and the simplicity of the laws of nature, and Indu Satija, in a wonderfully personal style, relates this story, enriching it with a vast number of lively historical anecdotes, many photographs, beautiful visual images, and even poems, making her book a great feast, for the eyes, for the mind and for the soul.

Class-tested textbook that shows readers how to solve physical problems and deal with their underlying theoretical concepts while using Mathematica® to derive numeric and symbolic solutions. Delivers dozens of fully interactive examples for learning and implementation, constants and formulae can readily be altered and adapted for the user’s purposes. New edition offers enlarged two-volume format suitable to courses in mechanics and electrodynamics, while offering dozens of new examples and a more rewarding interactive learning environment.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art in the development of the theory of scale relativity and fractal space-time. It suggests an original solution to the disunified nature of the classical-quantum transition in physical systems, enabling quantum mechanics to be based on the principle of relativity provided this principle is extended to scale transformations of the reference system. In the framework of such a newly-generalized relativity theory (including position, orientation, motion and now scale transformations), the fundamental laws of physics may be given a general form that goes beyond and integrates the classical and the quantum regimes. A related concern of this book is the geometry of space-time, which is described as being fractal and nondifferentiable. It collects and organizes theoretical developments and applications in many fields, including physics, mathematics, astrophysics, cosmology and life sciences.

Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, this text develops the techniques of path integration and deals with applications, covering a host of illustrative examples. 26 figures. 1981 edition.

This collective volume is the first to discuss systematically what are the possibilities to model different aspects of brain and mind functioning with the formal means of fractal geometry and deterministic chaos. At stake here is not an approximation to the way of actual performance, but the possibility of brain and mind to implement nonlinear dynamic patterns in their functioning. The contributions discuss the following topics (among others): the edge-of-chaos dynamics in recursively organized neural systems and in intersensory interaction, the fractal timing of the neural functioning on different scales of brain networking, aspects of fractal neurodynamics and quantum chaos in novel biophysics, the fractal maximum-power evolution of brain and mind, the chaotic dynamics in the development of consciousness, etc. It is suggested that the ‘margins’ of our capacity for phenomenal experience, are ‘fractal-limit phenomena’. Here the possibilities to prove the plausibility of fractal modeling with appropriate experimentation and rational reconstruction are also discussed. A conjecture is made that the brain vs. mind differentiation becomes possible, most probably, only with the imposition of appropriate symmetry groups implementing a flowing interface of features of local vs. global brain dynamics. (Series B)

The study of nonlinear dynamical systems has been gathering momentum since the late 1950s. It now constitutes one of the major research areas of modern theoretical physics. The twin themes of fractals and chaos, which are linked by attracting sets in chaotic systems that are fractal in structure, are currently generating a great deal of excitement. The degree of structure robustness in the presence of stochastic and quantum noise is thus a topic of interest. Chaos, Noise and Fractals discusses the role of fractals in quantum mechanics, the influence of phase noise in chaos and driven optical systems, and the arithmetic of chaos. The book represents a balanced overview of the field and is a worthy addition to the reading lists of researchers and students interested in any of the varied, and sometimes bizarre, aspects of this intriguing subject.

This is the first detailed account of a new approach to microphysics based on two leading ideas: (i) the explicit dependence of physical laws on scale encountered in quantum physics, is the manifestation of a fundamental principle of nature, scale relativity. This generalizes Einstein's principle of (motion) relativity to scale transformations; (ii) the mathematical achievement of this principle needs the introduction of a nondifferentiable space-time varying with resolution, i.e. characterized by its fractal properties.The author discusses in detail reactualization of the principle of relativity and its application to scale transformations, physical laws which are explicitly scale dependent, and fractals as a new geometric description of space-time.

The nonlocality phenomena exhibited by entangled quantum systems are certainly one of the most extraordinary aspects of quantum theory. This book discusses this phe nomenon according to several points of view, i.e., according to different interpretations of the mathematics of the quantum formalism. The several interpretations of the Copenhagen interpretation, the many worlds, the de Broglie-Bohm, quantum logics, the decohering by the environment approach and the histories approach interpretations are scrutinized and criticized in detail. Recent results on cryptography, quantum bit commitment, quantum erasers and teleportation are also presented and discussed. In preparing the book we benefited from discussions with many people, but we would like, in particular, to express our gratitude to Professor B. d'Espagnat for his useful comments and suggestions. We are grateful also to Ms. L. Gentry EI-Dash for the English revision, to Dr. 1. E. Maiorino for the production of the figures and a careful reading of the manuscript, and for the statI of Plenum for advice and for having produced a nice book. Finally, the authors thank FAPESP (contract no. I 99612657-0) for a grant making this book possible. A. A. ORIB AND W. A. RODRIGUES, JR.