Foundations Of Quantum Mechanics In The Light Of New Technology Selected Papers From The Proceedings Of The First Through Fourth International Symposia On Foundations Of Quantum Mechanics

”I re-experience once again the stimulating atmosphere of each of the ISQMs: There were theoretical discussions in diverse frontier areas of physics as well as descriptions of beautiful new (or planned) experiments and technologies. From each of the Symposia I always came away with the exciting feeling of how wonderful physics is and how lucky it is to be a physicist in this era.”Chen Ning YangThis volume is selected from the First through Fourth International Symposia on Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. The International Symposia on Foundations of Quantum Mechanics in the Light of New Technology (ISQMs) provide a unique interdisciplinary forum where distinguished theorists and experimentalists of diverse fields of research gather to discuss basic problems in quantum mechanics in the light of new technology. This volume collects 51 papers selected from over 200 papers by many distinguished scientists. It includes articles by C N Yang, J A Wheeler, Y Nambu, L Esaki and M P A Fisher, to name just a few, and contains topics ranging from quantum measurements to quantum cosmology.

This memorial volume in honor of Dr Akira Tonomura is to commemorate his enormous contributions to fundamental physics in addition to the basic technology of electron microscopy. Dr Tonomura passed away on May 2, 2012 at the age of 70. He was Fellow of Hitachi, Ltd., Group Director of Single Quantum Dynamics Research Group of RIKEN, Principal Investigator of the FIRST Tonomura Project, and Professor of Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University.The book consists of: 1) contributions from distinguished physicists, who participated in the “Tonomura FIRST International Symposium on Electron Microscopy and Gauge Fields” planned by Tonomura himself and held in Tokyo on May 9-10, 2012, and 2) reprints of key papers by Tonomura and his team. Invited speakers at this Symposium include Chen Ning Yang and other distinguished physicists such as Yakir Aharonov, Gordon Baym, Christian Colliex, Anthony J Leggett, Naoto Nagaosa, Nobuyuki Osakabe and Masahito Ueda. This “memorial” Symposium was originally planned to commemorate the start of the Japanese-government-sponsored FIRST Tonomura Project to construct the 1.2 MV holography electron microscope capable of observing quantum phenomena in the microscopic world. In addition, the book includes contributions from participants of the past ISQM-Tokyo symposia held at Hitachi and from Tonomura's longtime friends, including Michael Berry, Jerome Friedman, Hidetoshi Fukuyama, Joseph Imry, Yoshinori Tokura, Jaw-Shen Tsai, and Anton Zeilinger.The co-editors are Kazuo Fujikawa, Tonomura's longtime friend, and Yoshimasa A Ono who is Tonomura's associate at Hitachi Advanced Research Laboratory and now in the FIRST Tonomura Project.

Quantum theory is at the foundation of the physical description of our world. One of the people who contributed significantly to our conceptual understanding of this theory was Heinz-Dieter Zeh (1932-2018). He was the pioneer of the process of decoherence, through which the classical appearance of our world can be understood. This volume presents a collection of essays dedicated to his memory, written by distinguished scientists and scholars. They cover all aspects of the interpretation of quantum theory in general and the quantum-to-classical transition in particular. This volume provides illuminating reading to anyone seeking a deep understanding of quantum theory and its relevance to the foundations of physics.

This book provides a thorough discussion about fundamental questions regarding urban theories and modeling. It is a curated collection of contributions to a workshop held in Paris on October 12th and 13th 2017 at the Institute of Complex Systems by the team of ERC GeoDiverCity. There are several chapters conveying the answers given by single authors to problems of conceptualization and modeling and others in which scholars reply to their conception and question them. Even, the chapters transcribing keynote presentations were rewritten according to contributions from the respective discussions. The result is a complete “state of the art” of what is our knowledge about urban processes and their possible formalization.

The quantum measurement problem is one of the most fascinating and challenging topics in physics both theoretically and experimentally. It involves deep questions and the use of very sophisticated and elegant techniques. After analyzing the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics and of the Copenhagen interpretation, this book reviews the most important approaches to the measurement problem and rigorously reformulates the “collapse of the wave function” by measurement, as a dephasing process quantitatively characterized by an order parameter (called the decoherence parameter), according to the many-Hilbert-space approach to the problem.The book deals not only with the measurement processes (including imperfect measurements) but also with related interference and mesoscopic phenomena — by means of general arguments — of solvable models and of numerical simulations. The quantum Zeno effect and the issue of irreversibility are also discussed.