The Dirac Spectrum

This volume surveys the spectral properties of the spin Dirac operator. After a brief introduction to spin geometry, we present the main known estimates for Dirac eigenvalues on compact manifolds with or without boundaries. We give examples where the spectrum can be made explicit and present a chapter dealing with the non-compact setting. The methods mostly involve elementary analytical techniques and are therefore accessible for Master students entering the subject. A complete and updated list of references is also included.

This volume surveys the spectral properties of the spin Dirac operator. After a brief introduction to spin geometry, it presents the main known estimates for Dirac eigenvalues on compact manifolds with or without boundaries.

Gaining a theoretical understanding of the properties of ultra-relativistic dense matter has been one of the most important and challenging goals in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In this thesis, the author analyzes dense quark matter in QCD with gauge group SU(2) using low-energy effective theoretical techniques and elucidates a novel connection between statistical properties of the Dirac operator spectrum at high baryon chemical potential and a special class of random matrix theories. This work can be viewed as an extension of a similar correspondence between QCD and matrix models which was previously known only for infinitesimal chemical potentials. In future numerical simulations of dense matter the analytical results reported here are expected to serve as a useful tool to extract physical observables such as the BCS gap from numerical data on the Dirac spectrum.

Quantum mechanics provides the fundamental theoretical apparatus for describing the structure and properties of atoms and molecules in terms of the behaviour of their fundamental components, electrons and nudeL For heavy atoms and molecules containing them, the electrons can move at speeds which represent a substantial fraction of the speed of light, and thus relativity must be taken into account. Relativistic quantum mechanics therefore provides the basic formalism for calculating the properties of heavy-atom systems. The purpose of this book is to provide a detailed description of the application of relativistic quantum mechanics to the many-body prob lem in the theoretical chemistry and physics of heavy and superheavy elements. Recent years have witnessed a continued and growing interest in relativistic quantum chemical methods and the associated computa tional algorithms which facilitate their application. This interest is fu elled by the need to develop robust, yet efficient theoretical approaches, together with efficient algorithms, which can be applied to atoms in the lower part of the Periodic Table and, more particularly, molecules and molecular entities containing such atoms. Such relativistic theories and computational algorithms are an essential ingredient for the description of heavy element chemistry, becoming even more important in the case of superheavy elements. They are destined to become an indispensable tool in the quantum chemist's armoury. Indeed, since relativity influences the structure of every atom in the Periodic Table, relativistic molecular structure methods may replace in many applications the non-relativistic techniques widely used in contemporary research.

This proceedings volume contains papers presented at the Eight Workshop on Continuous Advances in QCD (quantum chromodynamics), held at the William I Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, USA on May 15?18, 2008.

This proceedings volume contains papers presented at the Eight Workshop on Continuous Advances in QCD (quantum chromodynamics), held at the William I Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, USA on May 15OCo18, 2008.

This fifteenth volume of the Poincare Seminar Series, Dirac Matter, describes the surprising resurgence, as a low-energy effective theory of conducting electrons in many condensed matter systems, including graphene and topological insulators, of the famous equation originally invented by P.A.M. Dirac for relativistic quantum mechanics. In five highly pedagogical articles, as befits their origin in lectures to a broad scientific audience, this book explains why Dirac matters. Highlights include the detailed "Graphene and Relativistic Quantum Physics", written by the experimental pioneer, Philip Kim, and devoted to graphene, a form of carbon crystallized in a two-dimensional hexagonal lattice, from its discovery in 2004-2005 by the future Nobel prize winners Kostya Novoselov and Andre Geim to the so-called relativistic quantum Hall effect; the review entitled "Dirac Fermions in Condensed Matter and Beyond", written by two prominent theoreticians, Mark Goerbig and Gilles Montambaux, who consider many other materials than graphene, collectively known as "Dirac matter", and offer a thorough description of the merging transition of Dirac cones that occurs in the energy spectrum, in various experiments involving stretching of the microscopic hexagonal lattice; the third contribution, entitled "Quantum Transport in Graphene: Impurity Scattering as a Probe of the Dirac Spectrum", given by Hélène Bouchiat, a leading experimentalist in mesoscopic physics, with Sophie Guéron and Chuan Li, shows how measuring electrical transport, in particular magneto-transport in real graphene devices - contaminated by impurities and hence exhibiting a diffusive regime - allows one to deeply probe the Dirac nature of electrons. The last two contributions focus on topological insulators; in the authoritative "Experimental Signatures of Topological Insulators", Laurent Lévy reviews recent experimental progress in the physics of mercury-telluride samples under strain, which demonstrates that the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator hosts a two-dimensional massless Dirac metal; the illuminating final contribution by David Carpentier, entitled "Topology of Bands in Solids: From Insulators to Dirac Matter", provides a geometric description of Bloch wave functions in terms of Berry phases and parallel transport, and of their topological classification in terms of invariants such as Chern numbers, and ends with a perspective on three-dimensional semi-metals as described by the Weyl equation. This book will be of broad general interest to physicists, mathematicians, and historians of science.