E-Book Overview
Instantons, or pseudoparticles, are solutions to the equations of motion in classical field theories on a Euclidean spacetime. Instantons are found everywhere in quantum theories as they have many applications in quantum tunnelling. Diverse physical phenomena may be described through quantum tunnelling, for example: the Josephson effect, the decay of meta-stable nuclear states, band formation in tight binding models of crystalline solids, the structure of the gauge theory vacuum, confinement in 2+1 dimensions, and the decay of superheated or supercooled phases. Drawing inspiration from Sidney Coleman's Erice lectures, this volume provides an accessible, detailed introduction to instanton methods, with many applications, making it a valuable resource for graduate students in many areas of physics, from condensed matter, particle and nuclear physics, to string theory.
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THE THEORY AND APPLICATIONS OF INSTANTON CALCULATIONS
Instantons, or pseudoparticles, are solutions to the equations of motion in classical field theories on a Euclidean spacetime. Instantons are found everywhere in quantum theories as they have many applications in quantum tunnelling. Diverse physical phenomena may be described through quantum tunnelling, for example: the Josephson effect, the decay of meta-stable nuclear states, band formation in tight binding models of crystalline solids, the structure of the gauge theory vacuum, confinement in 2+1 dimensions, and the decay of superheated or supercooled phases. Drawing inspiration from Sidney Coleman’s Erice lectures, this volume provides an accessible, detailed introduction to instanton methods, with many applications, making it a valuable resource for graduate students in many areas of physics, from condensed matter, particle and nuclear physics, to string theory. Manu Paranjape has been a professor at the Université de Montréal for the past 30 years. In this time he has worked on quantum field theory, the Skyrme model, non-commutative geometry, quantum spin tunnelling and conformal gravity. Whilst working on induced fermion numbers, he discovered induced angular momentum on flux tube solitons, and more recently he discovered the existence of negative-mass bubbles in de Sitter space, which merited a prize in the Gravity Research Foundation essay competition.
CAMBRIDGE MONOGRAPHS ON MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS General Editors: P. V. Landshoff, D. R. Nelson, S. Weinberg S. J. Aarseth Gravitational N-Body Simulations: Tools and Algorithms † J. Ambjørn, B. Durhuus and T. Jonsson Quantum Geometry: A Statistical Field Theory Approach † A. M. Anile Relativistic Fluids and Magneto-fluids: With Applications in Astrophysics and Plasma Physics J. A. de Azcárraga and J. M. Izquierdo Lie Groups, Lie Algebras, Cohomology and Some Applications in Physics † O. Babelon, D. Bernard and M. Talon Introduction to Classical Integrable Systems † F. Bastianelli and P. van Nieuwenhuizen Path Integrals and Anomalies in Curved Space † D. Baumann and L. McAllister Inflation and String Theory V. Belinski and M. Henneaux The Cosmological Singularity † V. Belinski and E. Verdaguer Gravitational Solitons † J. Bernstein Kinetic Theory in the Expanding Universe † G. F. Bertsch and R. A. Broglia Oscillations in Finite Quantum Systems † N. D. Birrell and P. C. W. Davies Quantum Fields in Curved Space † K. Bolejko, A. Krasiński, C. Hellaby and M-N. Célérier Structures in the Universe by Exact Methods: Formation, Evolution, Interactions D. M. Brink Semi-Classical Methods for Nucleus-Nucleus Scattering † M. Burgess Classical Covariant Fields † E. A. Calzetta and B.-L. B. Hu Nonequilibrium Quantum Field Theory S. Carlip Quantum Gravity in 2 +1 Dimensions † P. Cartier and C. DeWitt-Morette Functional Integration: Action and Symmetries † J. C. Collins Renormalization: An Introduction to Renormalization, the Renormalization Group and the