Media

Filter the library

profile Basil J. Hiley

Basil J. Hiley is a British quantum physicist and professor emeritus of the University of London. He received the Majorana Prize "Best person in physics" in 2012. Long-time co-worker of David Bohm, Hiley is known for his work with Bohm on implicate orders and for his work on algebraic descriptions of quantum physics in terms of underlying symplectic and orthogonal Clifford algebras. Hiley co-authored the book The Undivided Universe with David Bohm, which is considered the main reference for Bohm's interpretation of quantum theory. The work of Bohm and Hiley has been characterized as primarily addressing the question "whether we can have an adequate conception of the reality of a quantum system, be this causal or be it stochastic or be it of any other nature" and meeting the scientific challenge of providing a mathematical description of quantum systems that matches the idea of an implicate order. Basil Hiley was born 1935 in Burma, where his father worked for the military for the British Raj. He moved to Hampshire, England, at the age of twelve, where he attended secondary school. His interest in science was stimulated by his teachers at secondary school and by books, in particular The Mysterious Universe by James Hopwood Jeans and Mr Tompkins in Wonderland by George Gamow. Hiley performed undergraduate studies at King's College London. He published a paper in 1961 on the random walk of a macromolecule, followed by further papers on the Ising model, and on lattice constant systems defined in graph theoretical terms. In 1962 he obtained his PhD from King's College in condensed matter physics, more specifically on cooperative phenomena in ferromagnets and long chain polymer models, under the supervision of Cyril Domb and Michael Fisher. Hiley first met David Bohm during a week-end meeting organized by the student society of King's College at Cumberland Lodge, where Bohm held a lecture. In 1961 Hiley was appointed assistant lecturer at Birkbeck College, where Bohm had taken the chair of Theoretical Physics shortly before. Hiley wanted to investigate how physics could be based on a notion of process, and he found that David Bohm held similar ideas. He reports that during the seminars he held together with Roger Penrose he was particularly fascinated by John Wheeler's "sum over three geometries" ideas that he was using to quantise gravity. Hiley worked with David Bohm for many years on fundamental problems of theoretical physics. Initially Bohm's model of 1952 did not feature in their discussions; this changed when Hiley asked himself whether the "Einstein-Schrödinger equation", as Wheeler called it, might be found by studying the full implications of that model. They worked together closely for three decades. Together they wrote many publications, including the book The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory, published 1993, which is now considered the major reference for Bohm's interpretation of quantum theory. In 1995, Basil Hiley was appointed to the chair in physics at Birkbeck College at the University of London. He was awarded the 2012 Majorana Prize in the category The Best Person in Physics for the algebraic approach to quantum mechanics and furthermore in recognition of ″his paramount importance as natural philosopher, his critical and open minded attitude towards the role of science in contemporary culture". (source: Wikipedia)

profile Lajos Diósi

CURRICULUM VITAE Prof. Lajos Diósi b. June 16, 1950, Gyula, Hungary home: H-1072 Budapest, Rákóczi út 36., Hungary office: HAS, Wigner Research Centre for Physics, High Energy Physics Department H-1525 Budapest 114., P.O.B. 49, Hungary cell: +36-302956469, tel+fax: -13221710 (home) fax: -3959151 (office) e-mail: diosi.lajos@wigner.mta.hu, internet: www.rmki.kfki.hu/~diosi - Education, degrees, titles 2008 private professor (Eötvös University, Budapest) 2007 habilitated doctor (Eötvös University, Budapest) 2000 Doctor of Academy (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) 1987 "Candidate" degree (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) 1976 Ph.D. (Eötvös University, Budapest) 1973 M.Sc. with Distinction (Eötvös University, Budapest) - Awards, Honours, memberships 2014 Member of Editorial Board, International Journal of Quantum Foundations 2012 Prize of the Academy (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) 2011 Management Committee, COST Action Fundamental Problems in Quantum Physics 2008 Member of Editorial Advisory Board, The Open Nuclear & Particle Physics Journal 2008 Lady Davies Visiting Professorship (Technion, Israel) 1999 Member of Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin, Wissenschaftskolleg) 1997 Visiting Professor (QMW College, London University) - Employment 2000 scientific advisor, High Energy Physics Department 1988 senior research associate, High Energy Physics Department 1979 research associate, High Energy Physics Department 1976 co-worker, Computer Technics Department, 1973 postgraduate position, High Energy Physics Department - Research Interests Foundations of quantum theory -- emergence of classicality Quantum information theory Open quantum systems -- master equations, stochastic trajectories Thermodynamics -- Riemann-geometric methods, finite-time-processes Cosmology -- viscous early universe High energy  physics -- 40GeV hadron-nucleus experiment Particle physics -- multiparticle production, phenomenology Miscellaneous comments and criticisms - Publications, Citations, Talks 103 refereed papers +35 book/proceedings contributions +2 books 2500 independent citations in SCI +500 in books/proceedings +200 in Theses +300 in preprints 62 conference talks +55 seminars - Referee for Physical Review A, B, E, Letters, Physics Letters A, ... (>150 times) - Teaching Special courses (Eötvös University, Budapest; Technion, Haifa; University of Szeged) Ph.D. examinator/referee (Univ.'s of London, Konstanz, Szeged, Pécs, Geneva, La Laguna; Macquarie Univ.) M.Sc. supervisor, Ph.D. advisor (Eötvös University) - Visiting scientist/professor (for at least 1 month) 2008, 1986 Technion, Haifa 2007, 2006 University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2006, 2005, 2003 Konstanz University, Konstanz 2003, 2000, 1998 Hebrew University, Jerusalem 2002 Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton 1999 Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin 1998 Institute for Advanced Study, Jerusalem 1997 Imperial College, London 1996 Queen Mary and Westfield College, London 1993 Geneva University, Geneva 1991 Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen 1990 International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Triest - Conference organization 2004-6-8-10-12-14 co-organizer of Intl. Workshops DICE (Tuscany) 1993 co-organizer of Intl. Workshop Stochastic Evolution of Quantum States (Budapest)

profile Maurice de Gosson

Maurice A. de Gosson also known as Maurice Alexis de Gosson de Varennes is an Austrian mathematician and mathematical physicist, born in 1948 in Berlin. He is currently a Senior Researcher at the Numerical Harmonic Analysis Group (NuHAG) of the University of Vienna. After completing his PhD in microlocal analysis at the University of Nice in 1978 under the supervision of Jacques Chazarain, de Gosson soon became fascinated by Jean Leray's Lagrangian analysis. Under Leray's tutorship de Gosson completed a Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches en Mathématiques at the University of Paris 6 (1992). During this period he specialized in the study of the Leray–Maslov index and in the theory of the metaplectic group, and their applications to mathematical physics. In 1998 de Gosson met Basil Hiley, who triggered his interest in conceptual question in quantum mechanics. Basil Hiley wrote a foreword to de Gosson's book The Principles of Newtonian and Quantum Mechanics (Imperial College Press, London). After having spent several years in Sweden as Associate Professor and Professor in Sweden, de Gosson was appointed in 2006 at the Numerical Harmonic Analysis Group of the University of Vienna, created by Hans Georg Feichtinger (see www.nuhag.eu). He currently works in symplectic methods in harmonic analysis, and on conceptual questions in quantum mechanics, often in collaboration with Basil Hiley. Maurice de Gosson has held longer visiting positions at Yale University, University of Colorado in Boulder (Ulam Visiting Professor), University of Potsdam, Albert-Einstein-Institut (Golm), Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik (Bonn), Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse), Jacobs Universität (Bremen). Maurice de Gosson was the first to prove that Mikhail Gromov's symplectic non-squeezing theorem (also called „the Principle of the Symplectic Camel“) allowed the derivation of a classical uncertainty principle formally totally similar to the Robertson–Schrödinger uncertainty relations (i.e. the Heisenberg inequalities in a stronger form where the covariances are taken into account). This rather unexpected result was discussed in the media. In 2004/2005, de Gosson showed that Gromov's non-squeezing theorem allows a coarse graining of phase space by symplectic quantum cells, each described by a mean momentum and a mean position. The cell is invariant under canonical transformations. De Gosson called such a quantum cell a quantum blob: "The quantum blob is the image of a phase space ball with radius by a (linear) symplectic transformation" and “Quantum blobs are the smallest phase space units of phase space compatible with the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics and having the symplectic group as group of symmetries. Quantum blobs are in a bijective correspondence with the squeezed coherent states from standard quantum mechanics, of which they are a phase space picture.” Their invariance property distinguishes de Gosson's quantum blobs from the "quantum cells" known in thermodynamics, which are units of phase space with a volume of the size of Planck's constant h to the power of 3. De Gosson's notion of quantum blobs has given rise to a proposal for a new formulation of quantum mechanics, which is derived from postulates on quantum-blob-related limits to the extent and localization of quantum particles in phase space; this proposal is strengthened by the development of a phase space approach that applies to both quantum and classical physics, where a quantum-like evolution law for observables can be recovered from the classical Hamiltonian in a non-commutative phase space, where x and p are (non-commutative) c-numbers, not operators. (source: Wikipedia)