This book reflects on recent advances in the understanding of percolation systems to present a wide range of transport phenomena in inhomogeneous disordered systems. Further developments in the theory of macroscopically inhomogeneous media are also addressed. These developments include galvano-electric, thermoelectric, elastic properties, 1/f noise and higher current momenta, Anderson localization, and harmonic generation in composites in the vicinity of the percolation threshold.T...

This thesis casts new light on quantum entanglement of photons with complex spatial patterns due to direct coincidence imaging. It demonstrates novel methods to generate, investigate, and verify entanglement of complex spatial structures. Quantum theory is one of the most successful and astonishing physical theories. It made possible various technical devices like lasers or mobile phones and, at the same time, it completely changed our understanding of the world. Interestingly, such counte...

The book introduces ‘the state of the art' of pulsed laser ablation and its applications. It is based on recent theoretical and experimental studies. The book reaches from the basics to advanced topics of pulsed laser ablation. Theoretical and experimental fundamental phenomena involved in pulsed laser ablation are discussed with respect to material properties, laser wavelength, fluence and intensity regime of the light absorbed linearly or non-linearly in the target material. The energy a...

State-of-the-art survey by leading experts in the field. Major foci are superheavy nuclei and neutron-rich exotic nuclei. In addition new developments in nuclear fission and nuclear cluster decay are shown. Finally developments in relativistic heavy ion collisions and the physics of supercritical fields are detailed.

Ever since Einstein’s special relativity in 1905, the principle of invariant light speed in vacuum has been attracting attention from a wide range of disciplines. How to interpret the principle of light speed? Is light referred to continuous light, or light pulse with definite boundaries? Recent discovery of superluminal medium triggered vigorous discussion within the Physics community. Can communication via such “superluminal channel” break the speed limit and thus violate causality princ...

This book presents the latest results of quantum properties of light in the nanostructured environment supporting surface plasmons, including waveguide quantum electrodynamics, quantum emitters, strong-coupling phenomena and lasing in plasmonic structures. Different approaches are described for controlling the emission and propagation of light with extreme light confinement and field enhancement provided by surface plasmons. Recent progress is reviewed in both experimental and theoretical ...

Maintaining and improving energy security is one of the biggest challenges worldwide. The NATO ARW conference in Tashkent, October 2012, was devoted to discussing visions and concepts that are currently discussed in different research fields. Leading scientists have written concise contributions to introduce the reader to this exciting topic. The present volume summarizes the discussions at the conference.

This volume collects a a number of contributions on spontaneous symmetry breaking. Current studies in this general field are going ahead at a full speed. The book present review chapters which give an overview on the major break throughs of recent years. It covers a number of different physical settings which are introduced when a nonlinearity is added to the underlying symmetric problems and its strength exceeds a certain critical value. The corresponding loss of symmetry, called spontane...

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...

This thesis combines highly accurate optical spectroscopy data on the recently discovered iron-based high-temperature superconductors with an incisive theoretical analysis. Three outstanding results are reported: (1) The superconductivity-induced modification of the far-infrared conductivity of an iron arsenide with minimal chemical disorder is quantitatively described by means of a strong-coupling theory for spin fluctuation mediated Cooper pairing. The formalism developed in this thesis ...

This thesis elucidates electron correlation effects in topological matter whose electronic states hold nontrivial topological properties robust against small perturbations. In addition to a comprehensive introduction to topological matter, this thesis provides a new perspective on correlated topological matter.The book comprises three subjects, in which electron correlations in different forms are considered. The first focuses on Coulomb interactions for massless Dirac fermions. Us...

The past two decades have observed dramatic advancement in our understanding of the universe. Such progress in turn has triggered further questions yet to be answered. Aspired by such prospects, several institutions dedicated to the research of cosmology have been established in the last decade, which include the Leung Center for Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics (LeCosPA) at the National Taiwan University. To celebrate its 4th anniversary the First LeCosPA Symposium was held in February...