Savelij G. Kars enbojm Libros

For more than a century, studies of atomic hydrogen have been a rich source of scientific discoveries. These began with the Balmer series in 1885 and the early quantum theories of the atom, and later included the development of QED and the first successful gauge field theory. Today, hydrogen and its relatives continue to provide new fundamental information, as witnessed by the contributions to this book. The printed volume contains invited reviews on the spectroscopy of hydrogen, muonium, positronium, few-electron ions and exotic atoms, together with related topics such as frequency metrology and the determination of fundamental constants. The accompanying CD contains, in addition to these reviews, a further 40 contributed papers also presented at the conference „Hydrogen Atom 2“ held in summer 2000. Finally, to facilitate a historical comparison, the CD also contains the proceedings of the first „Hydrogen Atom“ conference of 1988. The book includes a foreword by Norman F. Ramsey.

This volume presents multidisciplinary treatments of important areas and new developments within precision physics. It concentrates on new topics and those not treated in the previous volumes about the precision physics of simple atoms, all published in LNP. For example, it concentrates on the proton structure and its effects on the energy levels, on simple molecules, on atoms somewhat more complicated than hydrogen (such as lithium), on exotic atoms and atoms with exotic nuclei.

The question of a possible temporal variation of the fundamental constants was raised by Paul Dirac in his „large number hypothesis“ in 1937. Today it appears in the context of the search for a unified theory of the fundamental interactions. It touches both fundamental and applied physics, as the postulate of the unalterability of the constants is the foundation for modern metrology. The book presents reviews written by leading experts in the field. Focussing on the question of variations of the fundamental „constants“ in time or space, the chapters cover the theoretical framework in which variations are expected and the search for variations of quantities like the fine-structure constant, the electron/proton mass ratio, g-factors of proton and neutron etc. in astrophysical and geophysical observations and in precision experiments with atomic clocks and frequency standards.

Precision physics of simple atoms is a multidisciplinary area, involving atomic, laser, nuclear and particle physics and also metrology. This book will thus be of interest to a broad community of physicists and metrologists. Furthermore, since hydrogen (and other hydrogen-like atoms) is a model system for applying quantum theory, the book contains valuable material for students. The chapters provide in-depth reviews covering precision measurements, accurate calculations, fundamental constants, frequency standards, and tests of fundamental theory. The latest progress in each of these areas is also described for the specialist. The topics selected for this book are largely complementary to those of the earlier related volume, LNP 570.