Why writing a book about a specialized task of the large topic of complex systems? And who will read it? The answer is simple: The fascination for a didactically valuable point of view, the elegance of a closed concept and the lack of a comprehensive disquisition.The fascinating part is that field equations can have localized solutions exhibiting the typical characteristics of particles. Regarding the field equations this book focuses on, the field phenomenon of localized solutions...

Building up gradually from first principles, this unique introduction to modern thermodynamics integrates classical, statistical and molecular approaches and is especially designed to support students studying chemical and biochemical engineering. In addition to covering traditional problems in engineering thermodynamics in the context of biology and materials chemistry, students are also introduced to the thermodynamics of DNA, proteins, polymers and surfaces. It includes over 80 detailed...

By year 1911 radioactivity had been discovered for over a decade, but its origin remained a mystery. Rutherford's discovery of the nucleus and the subsequent discovery of the neutron by Chadwick started the field of subatomic physics — a quest for understanding the fundamental constituents of matter.This book reviews the important achievements in subatomic physics in the past century. The chapters are divided into two parts: nuclear physics and particle physics. Written by renowned authors...

Colloids are submicron particles that are ubiquitous in nature (milk, clay, blood) and industrial products (paints, drilling fluids, food). In recent decades it has become clear that adding depletants such as polymers or small colloids to colloidal dispersions allows one to tune the interactions between the colloids and in this way control the stability, structure and rheological properties of colloidal dispersions. This book offers a concise introduction to the fundamentals of depletion e...

The many-body-theoretical basis and applications of theoretical spectroscopy of condensed matter, e.g. crystals, nanosystems, and molecules are unified in one advanced text for readers from graduate students to active researchers in the field. The theory is developed from first principles including fully the electron-electron interaction and spin interactions. It is based on the many-body perturbation theory, a quantum-field-theoretical description, and Green's functions. The important exp...

Ever since the beginning of mankind's efforts to pursue scientific inquiry into the laws of nature, visualization of the very distant and the very small has been paramount. The examples are numerous. A century ago, the atom appeared mysterious, a “raisin or plum pie of no structure,” until it was visualized on the appropriate length and time scales. Similarly, with telescopic observations, a central dogma of the cosmos was changed and complexity yielded to simplicity of the heliocentric st...

This volume considers experimental and theoretical dielectric studies of the structure and dynamics of complex systems. Complex systems constitute an almost universal class of materials including associated liquids, polymers, biomolecules, colloids, porous materials, doped ferroelectric crystals, nanomaterials, etc. These systems are characterized by a new "mesoscopic" length scale, intermediate between molecular and macroscopic. The mesoscopic structures of complex systems typically arise...

Superconductivity in materials without inversion symmetry in the respective crystal structures occurs in the presence of antisymmetric spin-orbit coupling as a consequence of an emerging electric field gradient. The superconducting condensate is then a superposition of spin-singlet and spin-triplet Cooper pairs. This scenario accounts for various experimental findings such as nodes in the superconducting gap or extremely large upper critical magnetic fields. Spin-triplet pairing can occur ...

Interface and colloid science is an important, though often under-valued, branch of science. It has applications and ramifications in domains as disparate as agriculture, mineral dressing, oil recovery, chemical industry, biotechnology, medical science, and many more. Proper application of interface and colloid science requires factual knowledge and insight into the many basic laws of physics and chemistry upon which it is based. Fundamentals of Interface and Colloid Science is the first b...

Nuclei and nuclear reactions offer a unique setting for investigating three (and in some cases even all four) of the fundamental forces in nature. Nuclei have been shown – mainly by performing scattering experiments with electrons, muons and neutrinos – to be extended objects with complex internal structures: constituent quarks; gluons, whose exchange binds the quarks together; sea-quarks, the ubiquitous virtual quark-antiquark pairs and last but not least, clouds of virtual mesons, surrou...

A volume which includes entries on quasicrystals, icosahedral packing, other packing considerations, extended structures, data treatment and data mining is presented by luminaries from the crystallography community. Several of the contributions are from the schools of such trend-setting crystallographers as J. Desmond Bernal and Aleksandr I. Kitaigorodskii. Internationally renowned scientists contributed such as Tom L. Blundell, Johann Jacob Burckhardt, John L. Finney, Jenny P. Glusker, No...

Neutrons are extremely versatile probes for investigating structure and dynamics in condensed matter. Due to their large penetration depth, they are ideal for in-situ measurements of samples situated in sophisticated and advanced environments. The advent of new high-intensity neutron sources and instruments, as well as the development of new real-time techniques, allows the tracking of transformation processes in condensed matter on a microscopic scale. The present volume provides a review...