On Klauder's Path

Book excerpt: This volume contains contributions by friends, colleagues and associates of John R Klauder on the occasion of his 60th birthday.Klauder's scientific work embraces vast territories from quantum theories to general relativity, optics and chaotic dynamics. A recurrent theme in his research is the role played by coherent states, in particular, in connection with path integral formulations of quantization. Perhaps at a less lofty level, this concept has had at least two spectacular applications: as a powerful investigative tool in quantum optics and as a precursor to wavelets. In a different vein, Klauder also attacked specific, non-renormalizable but exactly soluble, hard-core models in field theory, where he uncovered what has since been called the Klauder phenomenon.The contributors to this volume represent the special brand of mathematicians and physicists John Klauder helped define throughout his seminal career in the industrial and academic worlds.