Beta S Year Of Firsts

Beta sits beside her mother after she has just died. Beta is thirteen. Her mother stares off into space as wondering what to say. She goes to live at a foster home. When her mother first dies, Beta hears words of wisdom from her mother. After all the firsts, Beta no longer hears words of wisdom from her mother.

Special relativity provides the foundations of our knowledge of space and time. Without it, our understanding of the world, and its place in the universe, would be unthinkable. This book gives a concise, elementary, yet exceptionally modern, introduction to special relativity. It is a gentle yet serious 'first encounter', in that it conveys a true understanding rather than purely reports the basic facts. Only very elementary mathematical knowledge is needed to master it (basic high-school maths), yet it will leave the reader with a sound understanding of the subject. Special Relativity: A First Encounter starts with a broad historical introduction and motivation of the basic notions. The central chapters are dedicated to special relativity, mainly following Einstein's historical route. Later chapters turn to various applications in all parts of physics and everyday life. Unlike other books on the subject, the current status of the experimental foundations of special relativity is accurately reported and the experiments explained. This book will appeal to anyone wanting a introduction to the subject, as well as being background reading for students beginning a course in physics.

In the last 20 years the disciplines of particle physics, astrophysics, nuclear physics and cosmology have grown together in an unprecedented way. A brilliant example is nuclear double beta decay, an extremely rare radioactive decay mode, which is one of the most exciting and important fields of research in particle physics at present and the flagship of non-accelerator particle physics. While already discussed in the 1930s, only in the 1980s was it understood that neutrinoless double beta decay can yield information on the Majorana mass of the neutrino, which has an impact on the structure of space-time. Today, double beta decay is indispensable for solving the problem of the neutrino mass spectrum and the structure of the neutrino mass matrix. The potential of double beta decay has also been extended such that it is now one of the most promising tools for probing beyond-the-standard-model particle physics, and gives access to energy scales beyond the potential of future accelerators. This book presents the breathtaking manner in which achievements in particle physics have been made from a nuclear physics process. Consisting of a 150-page highly factual overview of the field of double beta decay and a 1200-page collection of the most important original articles, the book outlines the development of double beta decay research theoretical and experimental from its humble beginnings until its most recent achievements, with its revolutionary consequences for the theory of particle physics. It further presents an outlook on the exciting future of the field.

Nuclear double beta decay is one of the most promising tools for probing beyond-the-standard-model physics on beyond-accelerator energy scales. It is already now probing the TeV scale, on which new physics should manifest itself according to theoretical expectations. Only in the early 1980s was it known that double beta decay yields information on the Majorana mass of the exchanged neutrino. At present, the sharpest bound for the electron neutrino mass arises from this process. It is only in the last 10 years that the much more far-reaching potential of double beta decay has been discovered. Today, the potential of double beta decay includes a broad range of topics that are equally relevant to particle physics and astrophysics, such as masses of heavy neutrinos, of sneutrinos, as SUSY models, compositeness, leptoquarks, left-right symmetric models, and tests of Lorentz symmetry and equivalence principle in the neutrino sector. Double beta decay has become indispensable nowadays for solving the problem of the neutrino mass spectrum and the structure of the neutrino mass matrix OCo together with present and future solar and atmospheric neutrino oscillation experiments. Some future double beta experiments (like GENIUS) will be capable to be simultaneously neutrino observatories for double beta decay and low-energy solar neutrinos, and observatories for cold dark matter of ultimate sensitivity. This invaluable book outlines the development of double beta research from its beginnings until its most recent achievements, and also presents the outlook for its highly exciting future. Contents: Double Beta Decay OCo Historical Retrospective and Perspectives; Original Articles: From the Early Days until the Gauge Theory Era; The Nuclear Physics Side OCo Nuclear Matrix Elements; The Nuclear Physics Side OCo Nuclear Matrix Elements; Effective Neutrino Masses from Double Beta Decay, Neutrino Mass Models and Cosmological Parameters OCo Present Status and Prospects; Other Beyond Standard Model Physics: From SUSY and Leptoquarks to Compositeness and Quantum Foam; The Experimental Race: From the Late Eighties to the Future; The Future of Double Beta Decay; Appendices: Ten Years of HeidelbergOCoMoscow Experiment; The Potential Future OCo GENIUS. Readership: Particle physicists, nuclear physicists and astrophysicists."