1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910741149303321

Autore

Musser George

Titolo

Emergence in Condensed Matter and Quantum Gravity : A Nontechnical Review / / by George Musser

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Springer, , 2022

ISBN

9783031098956

9783031098949

Edizione

[1st ed. 2022.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (104 pages)

Collana

SpringerBriefs in Physics, , 2191-5431

Disciplina

530.41

539.754

Soggetti

Condensed matter

Gravitation

Topological insulators

Condensed Matter

Classical and Quantum Gravity

Topological Material

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references.

Nota di contenuto

1. Just a Phase They’re Going Through—Landau’s Theory of Phase Transitions. 2. Tipping the Scales -- 3. Quantum Physics -- 4. Frozen Yet Mobile—Superconductors, Bose-Einstein Condensates and Strange Metals -- 5. ‘Twistronics’—Graphene’s Magic Angle.

Sommario/riassunto

This book surveys the science at a semipopular, Scientific American-level. It is even-handed with regard to competing directions of research and philosophical positions. It is hard to get even two people to agree on anything, yet a million billion water molecules can suddenly and abruptly coordinate to lock themselves into an ice crystal or liberate one another to billow outwards as steam. The marvelous self-organizing capacity of matter is one of the central and deepest puzzles of physics, with implications for all the natural sciences. Physicists in the past century have found a remarkable diversity of phases of matter—and equally remarkable commonalities within that diversity. The pace of discovery has, if anything, only quickened in recent years



with the appreciation of quantum phases of matter and so-called topological order. The study of seemingly humdrum materials has made contact with the more exotic realm of quantum gravity, as theorists realize that the spacetime continuummay itself be a phase of some deeper and still unknown constituents. These developments flesh out the sometimes vague concept of the emergence—how exactly it is that complexity begets simplicity.