The Advanced School on Quantum Foundations and Open Quantum Systems was an exceptional combination of lectures. These comprise lectures in standard physics and investigations on the foundations of quantum physics.On the one hand it included lectures on quantum information, quantum open systems, quantum transport and quantum solid state. On the other hand it included lectures on quantum measurement, models for elementary particles, sub-quantum structures and aspects on the philosophy and pr...

Higgs Force: Cosmic Symmetry Shattered by Nicholas Mee is the definitive account of the science leading up to the discovery of the Higgs particle and the researchers involved in this quest. This discovery by what is arguably the world's biggest and most expensive experiment - the Large Hadron Collider - represents the most important scientific breakthrough for 50 years. Higgs Force is written in a lucid and engaging style with clear explanations for the general reader.

The book is based on the lectures delivered at the XCIII Session of the École de Physique des Houches, held in August, 2009. The aim of the event was to familiarize the new generation of PhD students and postdoctoral fellows with the principles and methods of modern lattice field theory, which aims to resolve fundamental, non-perturbative questions about QCD without uncontrolled approximations. The emphasis of the book is on the theoretical developments that have shaped the field in the la...

This book provides an advanced introduction to extended theories of quantum field theory and algebraic topology, including Hamiltonian quantization associated with some geometrical constraints, symplectic embedding and Hamilton-Jacobi quantization and Becci-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin (BRST) symmetry, as well as de Rham cohomology. It offers a critical overview of the research in this area and unifies the existing literature, employing a consistent notation.Although the results presented ap...

When trying to apply the solid knowledge of quantum field theory to actual LHC physics - in particular to the Higgs sector and certain regimes of QCD - one inevitably meets an intricate maze of phenomenological know-how, common lores and other, often historically grown intuition about what works and what not.These lectures are intended to be a brief but sufficiently detailed primer on LHC physics that will enable graduate students and any newcomer to the field to find their way thro...

This thesis presents the first experimental calibration of the top-quark Monte-Carlo mass. It also provides the top-quark mass-independent and most precise top-quark pair production cross-section measurement to date. The most precise measurements of the top-quark mass obtain the top-quark mass parameter (Monte-Carlo mass) used in simulations, which are partially based on heuristic models. Its interpretation in terms of mass parameters used in theoretical calculations, e.g. a running or a p...

Recent experimental and theoretical progress has elucidated the tunable crossover, in ultracold Fermi gases, from BCS-type superconductors to BEC-type superfluids.The BCS-BEC Crossover and the Unitary Fermi Gas is a collaborative effort by leading international experts to provide an up-to-date introduction and a comprehensive overview of current research in this fast-moving field.It is now understood that the unitary regime that lies right in the middle of the cros...

Understanding the dynamics of gauge theories is crucial, given the fact that all known interactions are based on the principle of local gauge symmetry. Beyond the perturbative regime, however, this is a notoriously difficult problem. Requiring invariance under supersymmetry turns out to be a suitable tool for analyzing supersymmetric gauge theories over a larger region of the space of parameters. Supersymmetric quantum field theories in four dimensions with extended N=2 supersymmetry are f...

Before any kind of new physics discovery could be made at the LHC, a precise understanding and measurement of the Standard Model of particle physics' processes was necessary. The book provides an introduction to top quark production in the context of the Standard Model and presents two such precise measurements of the production of top quark pairs in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV that were observed with the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC. The presented measureme...

This work was nominated as an outstanding PhD thesis by the LPSC, Université Grenoble Alpes, France. The LHC Run 1 was a milestone in particle physics, leading to the discovery of the Higgs boson, the last missing piece of the so-called "Standard Model" (SM), and to important constraints on new physics, which challenge popular theories like weak-scale supersymmetry.This thesis provides a detailed account of the legacy of the LHC Run 1 ≤¥regarding these aspects. First, the SM and th...

This brief reviews current research on magnetic skyrmions, with emphasis on formation mechanisms, observation techniques, and materials design strategies. The response of skyrmions, both static and dynamical, to various electromagnetic fields is also covered in detail.Recent progress in magnetic imaging techniques has enabled the observation of skyrmions in real space, as well as the analysis of their ordering manner and the details of their internal structure. In metallic systems,...

This book presents quantum kinetic theory in a comprehensive way. The focus is on density operator methods and on non-equilibrium Green functions. The theory allows to rigorously treat nonequilibrium dynamics in quantum many-body systems. Of particular interest are ultrafast processes in plasmas, condensed matter and trapped atoms that are stimulated by rapidly developing experiments with short pulse lasers and free electron lasers. To describe these experiments theoretically, the most pow...