Subject Grouping: Praxis

By Joseph John Bevelacqua
Wiley-VCH

When developing technologies involving the use of nuclear material or ionisation radiation, a number of safety issues and potential risks have to be addressed. The author of this book, a certified health physicist and an expert in radiation protection, discusses these emerging topics related to radiation-generating technologies and associated hazards.

The book opens with a brief overview of modern radiation-protection challenges, before delving into specific areas. First, the author discusses the nuclear-fuel cycle, analysing its steps and related issues such as reactors, new technologies for uranium enrichment and waste disposal. In the following section, he deals with nuclear accidents and radiological emergencies – making specific reference to the well-known disasters of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi – and with the risk of terrorist events involving sabotage or the use of improvised nuclear weapons and devices.

Today, nuclear material is also largely employed for medical imaging and therapies, thus a part of the book is devoted to these technologies and to the consequent increase of public radiation exposure. Finally, the last section focuses on regulatory issues, limitations and challenges.

Meant for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students of health-physics and engineering courses, the book would also be a useful reference for scientists and professionals working in radiation protection, fuel-cycle technology and nuclear medicine. More than 300 problems with solutions accompany the text and many appendices provide background information.

By N Cabibbo, L Maiani and O Benhar
CRC Press

There is always great excitement among the academic community when a new book by renowned scientists is published. Written by leading experts in particle physics, this book by Luciano Maiani and Omar Benhar, with contributions from the late Nicola Cabibbo, does not disappoint in this regard. Former CERN Director-General Maiani co-proposed the GIM mechanism, which is required to suppress flavour-changing neutral currents at the tree level and assumed the existence of a fourth quark that was discovered in 1974 at SLAC and BNL, while Cabibbo proposed a solution to the puzzle of electroweak decays of strange particles, which was later extended to give rise to the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa mixing matrix. Omar Benhar, an INFN research director and professor at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, is expert in the theory of many-particle systems, the structure of compact stars and electroweak interactions of nuclei.

Their book is the third volume of a series dedicated to relativistic quantum mechanics, gauge theories and electroweak interactions, based on material taught to graduate students at the University of Rome over a period of several decades. Given that gauge theories are the basis of interactions between elementary particles, it is not surprising that there are many books about gauge theories already out there – among the best are those written by Paul Frampton, J R Aitchison and Anthony Hey, Chris Quigg, Ta-Pei Cheng and Ling-Fong Li. One might therefore think that it is hard to add something new to the field, but this book introduces the reader in a concise and elegant manner to a modern account of the fundamentals of renormalisation in quantum field theories and to the concepts underlying gauge theories.

Containing more than 300 pages organised in 20 chapters and several appendices, the book focuses mainly on quantum electrodynamics (QED), which – despite its simplicity and limitations – serves as the mould of a gauge theory and at the same time it has a high predictive power and numerous applications. The first part of this treatise deals with the quantisation of QED via the path-integral method, from basic to advanced concepts, followed by a brief discussion on the renormalisation of QED and some of its applications, such as bremsstrahlung, the Lamb shift, and the electron anomalous magnetic moment. The prediction of the latter is considered one of the great achievements of QED.

In the second part of the book, the authors cover the renormalisation group equations of QED and introduce the quantisation of non-Abelian gauge theories, finishing with a proof of the asymptotic freedom of quantum chromodynamics. Afterwards, the concept of the running coupling constant is used to introduce a few ideas about grand unification. The final chapters are devoted to concepts related to the Standard Model of particle physics, such as the Higgs mechanism and the electroweak corrections to the muon anomalous magnetic moment. Finally, a few useful formulas and calculations are provided in several appendices.

Throughout the book the authors not only present the mathematical framework and cover basic and advanced concepts of the field, but also introduce several physical applications. The most recent discoveries in the field of particle physics are discussed. This is a book targeted at advanced students accustomed to mental challenges. A minor flaw is the lack of problems at the end of the chapters, which would offer students the possibility to apply the acquired knowledge, although the authors do encourage readers to complete a few demonstrations. This text will be very helpful for students and teachers interested in a treatment of the fundamentals of gauge theories via a concise and modern approach in the constantly changing world of particle physics.

By César Augusto Zen Vasconcellos (ed.)
World Scientific

In 1915 Albert Einstein presented to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences his theory of general relativity (GR), which represented a breakthrough in modern physics and became the foundation of our understanding of the universe at large. A century later, this elegant theory is still the basis of the current description of gravitation and a number of predictions derived from it have been confirmed in observations and experiments – most recently with the direct detection of gravitational waves.

This book celebrates the centenary of GR with a collection of 11 essays by different experts, which offer an overview of the theory and its numerous astrophysical and cosmological implications. After an introduction to GR, the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff equations describing the structure of relativistic compact stars are derived and their extension to deformed compact stellar objects presented. The book then moves to the so-called pc-GR theory, in which GR is algebraically extended to pseudo-complex co-ordinates in an attempt to get around singularities. Other topics covered are strange matter, in particular a conjecture that pulsar-like compact stars may be made of a condensed three-flavour quark state, and the use of a particular solution of the GR equations to construct multiple non-spherical cosmic structures.

Keeping the book contemporary, it also gives an overview of the most recent experimental results in particle physics and cosmology. Several contributions are devoted to the search for physics beyond the Standard Model at CERN, studies of cosmic objects and phenomena through gamma-ray lenses and, finally, to the recent detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO experiment.

By Gerard Auger and Eric Plagnol (eds)
World Scientific

In 2016, the first direct detection of gravitational waves – produced more than a billion years ago during the coalescence of two black holes of stellar origin – by the two detectors of the LIGO experiment was a tremendous milestone in the history of science. This timely book provides an overview of the field, presenting the basics of the theory and the main detection techniques.

The discovery of gravitational radiation is extraordinarily important, not only for confirming the key predictions of Einstein’s general relativity, but also for its implications. A new window on the universe is opening up, with more experiments – already built or in the planning stage – joining the effort to perform precise measurements of gravitational waves.

The book, composed of eight chapters, collects the contributions of many experts in the field. It first introduces the theoretical basics needed to follow the discussion on gravitational waves, so that no prior knowledge of general relativity is required. A long chapter dedicated to the sources of such radiation accessible to present and future observations follows. A section is then devoted to the principles of gravitational-wave detection and to the description of present and future Earth- and space-based detectors. Finally, an alternative detection technique based on cold atom interferometry is presented.

By Shan Gao
Cambridge University Press

Does the wave function directly represent a state of reality, or merely a state of (incomplete) knowledge of it, or something else? This question is the starting point of this book, in which the author – a professor of philosophy – aims to make sense of the wave function in quantum mechanics and investigate the ontological content of the theory. A very powerful mathematical object, the wave function has always been the focus of a debate that goes beyond physics and mathematics to the philosophy of science.

The first part of the book (chapters 1–5) deals with the nature of the wave function and provides a critical review of its competing interpretations. In the second part (chapters 6 and 7), the author focuses on the ontological meaning of the wave function and proposes his view, which is that the wave function in quantum mechanics is real and represents the state of random discontinuous motion of particles in 3D space. He offers two main arguments supporting this new interpretation. The third part (chapters 8 and 9) is devoted to investigating possible implications. In particular, the author discusses whether the quantum ontology described by the wave function is enough to account for our definite experience, or whether additional elements, such as many worlds or hidden variables, are needed.

Aimed at readers familiar with the basics of quantum mechanics, the book could also appeal to students and researchers interested in the philosophical aspects of modern science theories.

By Marc Cahay and Supriyo Bandyopadhyay
Wiley

With the rapid development of nanoscience and nano-engineering, quantum mechanics can no longer be considered exclusively the interest of physicists. Indeed, a fundamental understanding of physical phenomena at the nanoscale will require future electronic engineers, condensed-matter physicists and material scientists to master the fundamental principles of quantum theory.

Noticing that many textbooks on quantum mechanics are not meant for a wide audience of scientists, in particular those interested in practical applications and technologies at the nanoscale, the authors decided to fill this gap. In particular, they focus on the solution of problems that students and researchers working on state-of-the-art material and device applications might have to face. The problems are grouped by theme in 13 chapters, each completed by a section of further readings.

An ideal resource for graduate students, the book is also of value to professionals who need to update their knowledge or to refocus their expertise towards nanotechnologies.

By Pran Nath
Cambridge

This book discusses the role played by supersymmetry, and especially supergravity, in the quest for a unified theory of fundamental interactions. These are vast subjects, which not only embrace particle physics but also have ramifications in many other fields, such as modern mathematics, statistical physics and condensed-matter systems.

The author focuses on a rather specific subject: supergravity as a plausible scenario (perhaps more convincing than supersymmetry itself) for physics beyond the Standard Model. This justifies the way the author has chosen to distribute the material over the 24 chapters, for a total of 500 pages.

The first seven chapters introduce the field theories and symmetry principles on which a framework for the unification of particle forces would be based. After a short history of force unification, the author covers general relativity, Yang–Mills theories, spontaneous symmetry breaking, the basics of the Standard Model, the theory of gauge anomalies, effective Lagrangians and current algebra.

Supersymmetry is introduced next, with a short mathematical formulation including the concepts of graded lie algebras, superfields and the basic tools needed to construct (rigid) supersymmetric field theories, their multiplets and invariant Lagrangians. Non-supersymmetric grand unified theories and their supersymmetric extensions are also reviewed, investigating in particular the potential role they play in gauge coupling unification. It is surprising that the author does not discuss the original motivation for advocating supersymmetry in this context, which is related to the hierarchy problem and to the issue of naturalness of scales. No such discussion occurs in this chapter nor in the following one, devoted to the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model. The theory of supergravity and its mathematical structure, including matter couplings, is briefly exposed as well.

The second half of the book includes five chapters dedicated to the phenomenology of supergravity, covering in detail supergravity unification, CP violation, proton decay and supergravity in cosmology and astroparticle physics. In particular, supergravity inflation and supersymmetric candidates for dark matter are discussed at length. Further theories of supergravity and their connection to string theories in diverse dimensions are only briefly touched upon.

The last part of the book provides some tools, such as anti-commuting variables and spinor formalism, which are needed to write supersymmetric Lagrangians and to extract physical consequences. Notations, conventions and other miscellaneous arguments including further references conclude the volume.

The book can be considered as a valuable and updated addition to Steven Weinberg’s third volume on supersymmetry in The Quantum Theory of Fields series (2000, Cambridge University Press).

The author is a world expert on supersymmetry and supergravity phenomenology, who has contributed to the field with many original and outstanding works.

Certainly useful to graduate students in physics, the book could also prove to be a resource for advanced graduate courses in experimental high-energy physics.

By Richard C Fernow
Cambridge University Press

This book aims to provide a self-contained and concise treatment of the main subjects in magnetostatics, which describes the forces and fields resulting from the steady flow of electrical currents.

The first three chapters briefly present the basics, including the theory of magnetic fields from conductors in free space and from magnetic materials, as well as the general solutions to the Laplace equation and boundary value problems. Then the author moves on to discuss transverse fields in two dimensions. In particular, he covers fields produced by line currents, current sheets and current blocks, and the application of complex variable methods. He also treats transverse field magnets where the shape of the field is determined by the shape of the iron surface and the conductors are used to excite the field in the iron.

The following chapters are dedicated to other field configurations, such as axial field arrangements and periodic magnetic arrangements. The properties of permanent magnets and multiple fields produced by assemblies of them are also discussed.

Finally, the author deals with phenomena where there are slow variations in current or magnetic flux. Since only a restricted group of magnetostatic problems have analytic solutions, in the last chapter numerical techniques for calculating magnetic fields are provided, accompanied by many examples taken from accelerator and beam physics.

Aimed at undergraduates in physics and electrical engineering, the book includes not only basic explanations but also many references for further study.