The Second USA-USSR Symposium on Light Scattering in Con densed Matter was held in New York City 21-25 May 1979. The present volume is the proceedings of that conference, and contains all manuscripts received prior to 1 August 1979,...

Nowadays experimental nuclear physics pushes its limits towards highly unstable nuclei. The theoretical description of proton-rich and neutronrich nuclei or superheavy elements has become an important part of the modern nuclear physics....

Particularly intense lightning discharges can produce transient luminous events above thunderclouds, termed sprites, elves and jets. These short lived optical emissions in the mesosphere can reach from the tops of thunderclouds up to the...

“Newton’s Gravity” conveys the power of simple mathematics to tell the fundamental truth about nature. Many people, for example, know the tides are caused by the pull of the Moon and to a lesser extent the Sun. But very few can explain...

The prize-winning essays in this book address the fascinating but sometimes uncomfortable relationship between physics and mathematics. Is mathematics merely another natural science? Or is it the result of human creativity? Does physics...

This volume contains papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on Photons and Local Probes. The workshop had two predecessors. The first was the NATO ARW on Near Field Optics, held in October 1992 at Arc et Senans and...

In this PhD thesis, which was nominated for publication in this series by the Astronomical Institute at Charles University, Prague, the author investigates the orbital evolution of an initially thin stellar disc around a supermassive...

In order to analyze the light of cosmic objects, particularly at extremely great distances, spectroscopy is the workhorse of astronomy. In the era of very large telescopes, long-term investigations are mainly performed with small...

This monograph deals with theoretical aspects and numerical simulations of the interaction of electromagnetic fields with nonlinear materials. It focuses in particular on media with nonlinear polarization properties. It addresses the...

Sundials, which decorate church walls, public plazas, and elegant gardens, are first and foremost astronomical instruments. Before understanding how sundials work, one must first understand the apparent motion of the Sun in the sky. In...