variations statistics unification mathematical

books:

Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces

10 reviews
Frank Wilczek

Basic Books, 2008

Crystal clear
Wilczek got his Nobel Prize for his part in developing Chromodynamics, the theory of quarks and gluons and their strong force interaction. In this book we get an awe-inspiring jaunt through the most modern views of the quantum vacuum (which W. calls "The Grid") and unification theories (including SUSY). Lots of stuff I hadn't understood before - for example, the mass of protons and neutrons ...

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics

5 reviews
Frank Wilczek, Betsy Devine

W. W. Norton & Company, 1989

A good time will be had by all.
Longing for the Harmonies is subtitled "Themes and variations from modern physics". I would have added "and beyond": I doubt there's another popularization of quantum mechanics and particle physics that also touches upon Keats, ancient Babylon and child psychology, to name but a few. The book actually strikes me as two intertwined books. First, there are the "preludes" which are ...

Fantastic Realities: 49 Mind Journeys And a Trip to Stockholm

5 reviews
Frank Wilczek

World Scientific Publishing Company, 2006

Review of Fantastic Realities by Frank Wilczek
Fantastic Realities is a remarkable and engaging book, and will provide illuminating insights, whether you are an intelligent layperson seeking to improve your knowledge of the physical universe or a practicing physicist on the forefront of research. The book consists of a succession of bite-sized articles, containing pearls of encapsulated wisdom. Two of the most lustrous of these, in my ...

Fractional Statistics and Anyon Superconductivity
Frank Wilczek

World Scientific Publishing Company, 1990

Geometric Phases in Physics (Advanced Series in Mathematical Physics, Vol 5)

World Scientific Publishing Company, 1988

During the last few years, considerable interest has been focused on the phase that waves accumulate when the equations governing the waves vary slowly. The recent flurry of activity was set off by a paper by Michael Berry, where it was found that the adiabatic evolution of energy eigenfunctions in quantum mechanics contains a phase of geometric origin (now known as 'Berry's phase') in addition to the usual dynamical phase derived from ...