The Theory And Applications Of Instanton Calculations

This 2017 volume, now reissued as OA, provides an accessible, detailed introduction to instanton methods and their many applications.

Instantons, or pseudoparticles, are solutions to the equations of motion in classical field theories on a Euclidean spacetime. Instantons are found everywhere in quantum theories as they have many applications in quantum tunnelling. Diverse physical phenomena may be described through quantum tunnelling, for example: the Josephson effect, the decay of meta-stable nuclear states, band formation in tight binding models of crystalline solids, the structure of the gauge theory vacuum, confinement in 2+1 dimensions, and the decay of superheated or supercooled phases. Drawing inspiration from Sidney Coleman's Erice lectures, this volume provides an accessible, detailed introduction to instanton methods, with many applications, making it a valuable resource for graduate students in many areas of physics, from condensed matter, particle and nuclear physics, to string theory.

This volume summarizes the many modified theories of gravity and shows how to select physically viable models using symmetry principles.

An introduction to integrable and non-integrable scalar field models, with topological and non-topological soliton solutions. Focusing on both topological and non-topological solitons, this book brings together discussion of solitary waves and construction of soliton solutions and provides a discussion of solitons using simple model examples.

An overview of semi-classical gravity theory and stochastic gravity as theories of quantum gravity in curved space-time.

Provides an overview of the eigenspinors of the charge conjugation operator and mass one dimension fermions.

Carefully documenting the different formulations of general relativity, the author reveals valuable insight into the nature of the gravitational force and its interaction with matter. This book will interest graduate students and researchers in the fields of general relativity, gravitational physics and differential geometry.

Describes global non-inertial frames in special and general relativity and provides a detailed description of mathematical methods.