Search results for "History of Physics"
showing 10 items of 65 documents
Foundations of quantum mechanics and their impact on contemporary society
2018
Nearing a century since its inception, quantum mechanics is as lively as ever. Its signature manifestations, such as superposition, wave-particle duality, uncertainty principle, entanglement and nonlocality, were long confronted as weird predictions of an incomplete theory, paradoxes only suitable for philosophical discussions, or mere mathematical artifacts with no counterpart in the physical reality. Nevertheless, decades of progress in the experimental verification and control of quantum systems have routinely proven detractors wrong. While fundamental questions still remain wide open on the foundations and interpretations of quantum mechanics, its modern technological applications have …
Head-on collisions and orbital mergers of Proca stars
2019
Proca stars are self-gravitating Bose-Einstein condensates obtained as numerical stationary solutions of the Einstein-(complex)-Proca system. These solitonic can be both stable and form dynamically from generic initial data by the mechanism of gravitational cooling. In this paper we further explore the dynamical properties of these solitonic objects by performing both head-on collisions and orbital mergers of equal mass Proca stars, using fully non-linear numerical evolutions. For the head-on collisions, we show that the end point and the gravitational waveform from these collisions depends on the compactness of the Proca star. Proca stars with sufficiently small compactness collide leaving…
The Uncertain Limits Between Classical and Quantum Physics: Optical Dispersion and Bohr's Atomic Model
2018
Intrinsic energy of Lema\^itre-Tolman-Bondi models and cosmological implications
2013
Recently, some Lema{\^{\i}}tre-Tolman-Bondi metrics have been considered as models alternative to the dark energy within the Friedmann-Lema{\^{\i}}tre-Robertson-Walker universes. The vanishing of the intrinsic energy of these metrics is examined since such a vanishing, in the present case and in general, could be interpreted as a necessary condition to consider the possibility of the quantum creation of a metric. More specifically, this vanishing is examined in the particular case where the Lema{\^{\i}}tre-Tolman-Bondi metrics behave asymptotically like a Friedmann-Lema{\^{\i}}tre-Robertson-Walker universe. Finally, we deal with a particular model ruled out after being confronted with cosmi…
Production of hypernuclei in peripheral relativistic ion collisions
2013
Within a dynamical and statistical approach we study the main regularities in production of hypernuclei coming from projectile and target residues in relativistic ion collisions. We demonstrate that yields of hypernuclei increase considerably above the energy threshold for Lambda hyperons, and there is a saturation for yields of single hypernuclei with increasing the beam energy up to few TeV. Production of specific hypernuclei depend very much on the isotopic composition of the projectile, and this gives a chance to obtain exotic hypernuclei that may be difficult to reach in traditional hypernuclear experiments. Possibilities for the detection of such hypernuclei with planned and available…
Building the full Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix from six independent Majorana-type phases
2009
In the framework of three light Majorana neutrinos, we show how to reconstruct, through the use of 3 x 3 unitarity, the full PMNS matrix from six independent Majorana-type phases. In particular, we express the strength of Dirac-type CP violation in terms of these Majorana-type phases by writing the area of the unitarity triangles in terms of these phases. We also study how these six Majorana phases appear in CP-odd weak-basis invariants as well as in leptonic asymmetries relevant for flavored leptogenesis.
Photon Scattering Off Nuclei
2018
The study of nuclear and subnuclear structure by means of photon scattering is outlined. Besides a brief exposition of the formalism a few illustrative examples are discussed.
Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya and dipole-dipole interactions affect coupling-based Landau-Majorana-Stückelberg-Zener transitions
2020
It has been theoretically demonstrated that two spins (qubits or qutrits), coupled by exchange interaction only, undergo a coupling-based joint Landau-Majorana-St\"uckelberg-Zener (LMSZ) transition when a linear ramp acts upon one of the two spins. Such a transition, under appropriate conditions on the parameters, drives the two-spin system toward a maximally entangled state. In this paper, effects on the quantum dynamics of the two qudits, stemming from the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) and dipole-dipole (d-d) interactions, are investigated qualitatively and quantitatively. The enriched Hamiltonian model of the two spins, shares with the previous microscopic one the same C2-symmetry which onc…
An intrinsic characterization of spherically symmetric spacetimes
2010
We give the necessary and sufficient (local) conditions for a metric tensor to be a non conformally flat spherically symmetric solution. These conditions exclusively involve explicit concomitants of the Riemann tensor. As a direct application we obtain the {\em ideal} labeling of the Schwarzschild, Reissner-Nordstr\"om and Lema\^itre-Tolman-Bondi solutions.
Exploring Gravitational Lensing
2019
In this article, we discuss the idea of gravitational lensing, from a systematic, historical and didactic point of view. We show how the basic lensing equation together with the concepts of geometrical optics opens a space of implications that can be explored along different dimensions. We argue that Einstein explored the idea along different pathways in this space of implication, and that these explorations are documented by different calculational manuscripts. The conceptualization of the idea of gravitational lensing as a space of exploration also shows the feasibility of discussing the idea in the classroom using some of Einstein's manuscripts.