Nobel Laureate's lucid treatment of kinetic theory of gases, elementary particles, nuclear atom, wave-corpuscles, atomic structure and spectral lines, much more. Over 40 appendices, bibliography.

This text will thoroughly update the existing literature on atomic physics. Intended to accompany an advanced undergraduate course in atomic physics, the book will lead the students up to the latest advances and the applications to Bose-Einstein Condensation of atoms, matter-wave inter-ferometry and quantum computing with trapped ions. The elementary atomic physics covered in the early chapters should be accessible to undergraduates when they are first introduced to the subject. To complement the usual quantum mechanical treatment of atomic structure the book strongly emphasizes the experimental basis of the subject, especially in the later chapters. It includes ample tutorial material (examples, illustrations, chapter summaries, graded problem sets).

This collection of articles, which were first published in 1958 and written on various occasions between 1932 and 1957, forms a sequel to Danish physician Niels Bohr’s earlier essays in Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (1934). “The theme of the papers is the epistemological lesson which the modern development of atomic physics has given us and its relevance for analysis and synthesis in many fields of human knowledge. “The articles in the previous edition were written at a time when the establishment of the mathematical methods of quantum mechanics had created a firm foundation for the consistent treatment of atomic phenomena, and the conditions for an unambiguous account of experience within this framework were characterized by the notion of complementarity. In the papers collected here, this approach is further developed in logical formulation and given broader application.”

This new edition presents the recent developments in atomic physics. Beginning with a review of quantum mechanics, the book covers important areas of theoretical atomic physics, including semiclassical theory, periodic orbit theory, scaling properties for atoms in external fields, threshold behavior of ionization cross sections, and classical quantum dynamics of two-electron atoms.

For beginners and specialists in other fields: the Nobel Laureate's introduction to atomic spectra and their relationship to atomic structures, stressing basics in a physical, rather than mathematical, treatment. 80 illustrations.

ATOMIC PHYSICS 4 extends the series of books containing the invited papers presented at each "International Conference on Atomic Physics." FICAP, the fourth conference of this type since its foun dation in 1968, was held at the University of Heidelberg. The goal of these conferences, to cover the field of atomic physics with all its different branches, to review the present status of research, to revive the fundamental basis of atomic physics and to emphasize future developments of this field as well as its applications was met by more than thirty invited speakers, leaders in the field of atomic physics. Their talks were supplemented by more than two hundred contributed papers contained in the FICAP Book of Abstracts. This volume begins with papers given in honour and memory of E. U. Condon, to whom this conference was dedicated. It continues with articles on fundamental interactions in atoms and Quantum electrodynamics, on the fast progressing field of high energy heavy ion collisions and Quasi-molecules, on electronic and atomic collisions and the structure of electronic and ~-mesic atoms. The volume closes with contributions concerning the application of la sers in atomic physics, a new field of vastly increasing importance to fundamental experiments as well as applications. We feel that this book contains a very stimulating account of the present main streams of research in atomic physics and its possible future di rections.