Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Nanotechnology and Information Science

Yehuda B. Band · Yshai Avishai

Jan 2013 · Academic Press

About this ebook

Quantum mechanics transcends and supplants classical mechanics at the atomic and subatomic levels. It provides the underlying framework for many subfields of physics, chemistry and materials science, including condensed matter physics, atomic physics, molecular physics, quantum chemistry, particle physics, and nuclear physics. It is the only way we can understand the structure of materials, from the semiconductors in our computers to the metal in our automobiles. It is also the scaffolding supporting much of nanoscience and nanotechnology. The purpose of this book is to present the fundamentals of quantum theory within a modern perspective, with emphasis on applications to nanoscience and nanotechnology, and information-technology. As the frontiers of science have advanced, the sort of curriculum adequate for students in the sciences and engineering twenty years ago is no longer satisfactory today. Hence, the emphasis on new topics that are not included in older reference texts, such as quantum information theory, decoherence and dissipation, and on applications to nanotechnology, including quantum dots, wires and wells.

• This book provides a novel approach to Quantum Mechanics whilst also giving readers the requisite background and training for the scientists and engineers of the 21st Century who need to come to grips with quantum phenomena
• The fundamentals of quantum theory are provided within a modern perspective, with emphasis on applications to nanoscience and nanotechnology, and information-technology
• Older books on quantum mechanics do not contain the amalgam of ideas, concepts and tools necessary to prepare engineers and scientists to deal with the new facets of quantum mechanics and their application to quantum information science and nanotechnology
• As the frontiers of science have advanced, the sort of curriculum adequate for students in the sciences and engineering twenty years ago is no longer satisfactory today
• There are many excellent quantum mechanics books available, but none have the emphasis on nanotechnology and quantum information science that this book has

About the author

Yehuda B. Band is Professor of Chemistry, Electro-optics and Physics and a member of Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at the Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel. He holds the Snow Chair in Nanotechnology. Dr. Band has been affiliated in the past with Argonne National Laboratory, Allied-Signal Inc., National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), University of Chicago, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Harvard University. Dr. Band's research interests include collision theory, light scattering, nonlinear-optics electro-optics and quantum-optics, laser physics and chemistry, electronic transport properties of matter, molecular dissociation, and thermodynamics. His foremost expertise is in quantum scattering and the interaction of light with matter. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society. He is the author of about two hundred fifty scientific publications in these fields and holds numerous patents. He is the author of two books, Y. B. Band, Light and Matter: Electromagnetism, Optics, Spectroscopy and Lasers, (John Wiley, 2006), and Y. B. Band and Y. Avishai, Quantum Mechanics, with Applications to Nanotechnology and Information Science, (Elsevier, 2013). For additional information see Dr. Band’s web page, http://www.bgu.ac.il/~band

Yshai Avishai is an Emeritus professor of Physics and a member of Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at the Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel. He also holds an M.A degree in Economics. After earning his Ph.D in Physics at the Weizmann institute in Rehovot, professor Avishai has been a post doctoral research associate at Argonne National Laboratory and since then he has been affiliated with the Institute de Physique Nucleaire in Lyon, the theoretical physics department and the department of condensed matter physics at Saclay, the University of Strasbourg, The University of Paris Sud at Orsay, the University of Tokyo, the University of Hokkaido, the NTT basic research laboratories and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and contemporary Member of the Editorial Board of Physical Review Letters (Condensed matter physics). Dr. Avishai’s past research interests concentrated on the few-body problem and scattering theory in Nuclear Physics, but since 1990 they are mainly focused on theoretical condensed matter physics. These include mesoscopic systems, Anderson localization, the quantum Hall effect, quantum percolation, strongly interacting electrons and the Kondo effect and published about two hundred twenty scientific publications in these fields. Professor Avishai is the Editor of the book “Recent Progress in Many-Body Theories", (Plenum, New York, 1990), and a coauthor of two other books “Dynamical Symmetries for Nanostructures" by Konstantin Kikoin, Mikhail Kiselev and Yshai Avishai (Springer 2012) and the present book, Y. B. Band and Y. Avishai, "Quantum Mechanics, with Applications to Nanotechnology and Information Science", (Elsevier, 2013). For additional information see Dr. Avishai's web page, http://www.bgu.ac.il/~yshai