Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods

by Asher Peres

This text is intended for anyone who wants to understand the use of quantum theory for the description of physical processes. It is a graduate-level text, ideal for independent study, and includes numerous figures, exercises, bibliographical references, and even some computer programs.; The first chapters introduce formal tools: the mathematics are precise, but not excessively abstract. The physical interpretation too is rigorous. It makes no use of the uncertainty principle of other ill-defined notions. The central part of the book is devoted to Bell's theorem and to the Kochen-Specker theorem. It is here that quantum phenomena depart most radically from classical physics. There has recently been considerable progress on these issues, and the latest developments have been included. The final chapters discuss further topics of current research: spacetime symmetries, quantum thermodynamics and information theory, semiclassical methods, irreversibility, quantum chaos, and especially the measuring process. In particular, it is shown how modern techniques allow the extraction of more information from a physical system than traditional measurement methods.; Designed for physicists, mathematicians and philosophers of science with an interest in the applications and foundations of quantum theory, this volume is also suitable as a supplementary graduate textbook.

Genres: Physics

446 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Asher Peres (Hebrew: אשר פרס‎; January 30, 1934 – January 1, 2005) was an Israeli physicist, considered a pioneer in quantum information theory, as well is the connections between quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

According to his autobiography, he was born Aristide Pressman in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne in France, where his father, a Polish electrical engineer, had found work laying down power lines. He was given the name Aristide at birth, because the name his parents wanted, Asher, the name of his maternal grandfather, was not on the list of permissible French given names. When he went to live in Israel, he changed his first name to Asher and, as was common among immigrants, changed his family name to the Hebrew Peres, which he used for the rest of his life.

Peres obtained his Ph.D. in 1959 at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology under Nathan Rosen. Peres spent most of his academic career at Technion, where in 1988 he was appointed distinguished professor of physics.

Peres is well known for his work relating quantum mechanics and information theory, an approach which is extensively used in his textbook referenced below. Among other things, he helped to develop the Peres-Horodecki criterion for quantum entanglement, as well as the concept of quantum teleportation, and collaborated with others on quantum information and special relativity. He also introduced the Peres metric and researched the Hamilton–Jacobi–Einstein equation in general relativity. With M. Feingold, he published what is known to mathematicians as the Feingold-Peres conjecture and to physicists as the Feingold-Peres theory.

He died in Haifa, Israel.

More: http://tx.technion.ac.il/~peres/

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