Quantum Theory, Groups, Fields and Particles

Book excerpt: Symmetry and Dynamics have played, sometimes dualistic, sometimes complimentary, but always a very essential role in the physicist's description and conception of Nature. These are again the basic underlying themes of the present volume. It collects self-contained introductory contributions on some of the recent developments both in mathematical concepts and in physical applications which are becoming very important in current research. So we see in this volume, on the one hand, differential geometry, group representations, topology and algebras and on the other hand, particle equations, particle dynamics and particle interactions. Specifically, this book contains a complete exposition of the theory of deformations of symplectic algebras and quantization, expository material on topology and geometry in physics, and group representations. On the more physical side, we have studies on the concept of particles, on conformal spinors of Cartan, on gauge and supersymmetric field theories, and on relativistic theory of particle interactions and the theory of magnetic resonances. The contributions collected here were originally delivered at two Meetings in Turkey, at Blacksea University in Trabzon and at the University of Bosphorus in Istanbul. But they have been thoroughly revised, updated and extended for this volume. It is a pleasure for me to acknowledge the support of UNESCO, the support and hospitality of Blacksea and Bosphorus Universities for these two memorable Meetings in Mathematical Physics, and to thank the Contributors for their effort and care in preparing this work.