For decades, scientists have envisioned the possibility of storing energy in the form of nuclear excitations, resulting in specific nuclear configurations known as isomers. These unique metastable states have the ability to maintain their excited state for periods that range from several years to time spans exceeding the age of the Universe. However, despite numerous research efforts, achieving effective and practical control over isomer activation or depletion continues to be an unresolve...

This first open access volume of the handbook series contains articles on the standard model of particle physics, both from the theoretical and experimental perspective. It also covers related topics, such as heavy-ion physics, neutrino physics and searches for new physics beyond the standard model.A joint CERN-Springer initiative, the “Particle Physics Reference Library” provides revised and updated contributions based on previously published material in the well-known Landolt-Boe...

A host of astrophysical measurements suggest that most of the matter in the Universe is an invisible, nonluminous substance that physicists call “dark matter.” Understanding the nature of dark matter is one of the greatest challenges of modern physics and is of paramount importance to our theories of cosmology and particle physics. This text explores one of the leading hypotheses to explain dark matter: that it consists of ultralight bosons forming an oscillating field that feebly interact...

This unique volume contains the materials of the XXIXth International Workshop on High Energy Physics. The content of the volume is much wider than just high-energy physics and actually concerns all the most fundamental areas of modern physics research: high-energy physics proper, gravitation and cosmology. Presentations embrace both theory and experiment.

This book attempts to give a discussion of the physics and current and potential applications of the self-focusing of an intense femtosecond laser pulse in a tra- parent medium. Although self-focusing is an old subject of nonlinear optics, the consequence of self-focusing of intense femtosecond laser pulses is totally new and unexpected. Thus, new phenomena are observed, such as long range lam- tation, intensity clamping, white light laser pulse, self-spatial ltering, self-group phase lock...

Observational and experimental data pertaining to gravity and cosmology are changing our view of the Universe. General relativity is a fundamental key for the understanding of these observations and its theory is undergoing a continuing enhancement of its intersection with observational and experimental data. These data include direct observations and experiments carried out in our solar system, among which there are direct gravitational wave astronomy, frame dragging and tests of gravitat...

This book discusses the state of the art of the basic theoretical and observational topics related to black hole astrophysics. It covers all the main topics in this wide field, from the theory of accretion disks and formation mechanisms of jet and outflows, to their observed electromagnetic spectrum, and attempts to measure the spin of these objects. Black holes are one of the most fascinating predictions of general relativity and are currently a very hot topic in both physics and astrophy...

This open access volume brings together selected papers from the 8th International Conference on Attosecond Science and Technology. The contributions within represent the latest advances in attosecond science, covering recent progress in ultrafast electron dynamics in atoms, molecules, clusters, surfaces, solids, nanostructures and plasmas, as well as the generation of sub-femtosecond XUV and X-ray pulses, either through table-top laser setups or with X-ray free-electron lasers. In additio...

The first precision measurements on CP violation in the B system are reported. Both the BELLE and the BABAR collaboration presented, among others, results for sin 2ß with much improved accuracy. Results from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, SNO, also deserve to be mentioned. The convincing evidence of solar neutrino oscillations had been presented by SNO prior to the conference; a full presentation was given at the conference. An incredibly precise measurement of the anomalous magnetic mo...

This textbook is conceived for a one-semester course at the upper undergraduate or freshman graduate level. The book was written With the fact that nanotechnology is a vast field where the applications range from paint to nanomedicine, through plasmonics and catalysis. An introductory course must be a compromise between a quantitative and a qualitative treatment. For that, this textbook is more quantitative than others in the market, which often do not treat the key concepts with enough de...

This book is based on the lectures given at the “Euroschool on Exotic Beams” and collects contributions which address topics from the traditional core of the field of exotic nuclei like nuclear structure far from stability, discussing recent theoretical developments and state-of-the-art experimental methods. It provides also new perspectives in nuclear astrophysics and in applied areas such as gamma-ray emission imaging. The contributions are written with a pedagogical approach and careful...

The investigation of light-matter interactions in materials, especially those on the nanoscale, represents perhaps the most promising avenue for scientific progress in the fields of photonics and plasmonics. This book examines a variety of topics, starting from fundamental principles, leading to the current state of the art research. For example, this volume includes a chapter on the sensing of biological molecules with optical resonators (microspheres) combined with plasmonic systems, whe...