Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science

The last two decades have seen two significant trends emerging within the philosophy of science: the rapid development and focus on the philosophy of the specialised sciences, and a resurgence of Aristotelian metaphysics, much of which is concerned with the possibility of emergence, as well as the ontological status and indispensability of dispositions and powers in science. Despite these recent trends, few Aristotelian metaphysicians have engaged directly with the philosophy of the specialised sciences. Additionally, the relationship between fundamental Aristotelian concepts—such as "hylomorphism", "substance", and "faculties"—and contemporary science has yet to receive a critical and systematic treatment. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science aims to fill this gap in the literature by bringing together essays on the relationship between Aristotelianism and science that cut across interdisciplinary boundaries. The chapters in this volume are divided into two main sections covering the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of the life sciences. Featuring original contributions from distinguished and early-career scholars, this book will be of interest to specialists in analytical metaphysics and the philosophy of science

Quantum Darwinism and Friends

In honor of Wojciech Zurek’s 70th birthday, this Special Issue is dedicated to recent advances in our understanding the emergence of classical reality, and pays tribute to Zurek’s seminal contributions to our understanding of the Universe. To this end, “Quantum Darwinism and Friends” collects articles that make sense of the apparent chasm between quantum weirdness and classical perception, and provides a snapshot of this fundamental, exciting, and vivid field of theoretical physics

Hamburg neutrinos from supernova explosions.

Link with DESY library record available at http://libi2.desy.de:8991/F/28KUJ8P4IN3F41Y8L6972HDCFG9FKKPJEE7LKNVQMATRN1YV5N-07165?func=full-set-set&set_number=181011&set_entry=000001&format=999International audienceProceedings, workshop, HANSE 2011, Hamburg, Germany, July 19-23, 2011. PDF available at http://www-library.desy.de/preparch/desy/proc/proc11-03.pd

Contemporary Natural Philosophy and Philosophies - Part 1

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue titled "Contemporary Natural Philosophy and Philosophies" - Part 1 that was published in the journal Philosophies

Online learning of physics during a pandemic: A report from an academic experience in Italy

The arrival of the Sars-Cov II has opened a new window on teaching physics in academia. Frontal lectures have left space for online teaching, teachers have been faced with a new way of spreading knowledge, adapting contents and modalities of their courses. Students have faced up with a new way of learning physics, which relies on free access to materials and their informatics knowledge. We decided to investigate how online didactics has influenced students’ assessments, motivation, and satisfaction in learning physics during the pandemic in 2020. The research has involved bachelor (n = 53) and master (n = 27) students of the Physics Department at the University of Cagliari (N = 80, 47 male; 33 female). The MANOVA supported significant mean differences about gender and university level with higher values for girls and master students in almost all variables investigated. The path analysis showed that student-student, student-teacher interaction, and the organization of the courses significantly influenced satisfaction and motivation in learning physics. The results of this study can be used to improve the standards of teaching in physics at the University of Cagliar

Aspects of Quantum Information and AdS/CFT Duality

This thesis considers four different aspects of quantum information, AdS/CFT duality, and the interplay between them. First, we study the holographic complexity conjectures in detail for rotating black holes. We focus on a particular class of odd-dimensional equal-spinning black holes for which considerable simplifications occur. We study the complexity of formation, uncovering a direct relation between the complexity of formation and thermodynamic volume for large black holes. We also consider the late-time growth of complexity, finding that at late times the growth approaches a constant, and that Lloyd's bound is generically violated. Second, we generalize the Gao-Jafferis-Wall construction of traversable two-sided wormholes to multi-boundary wormholes in asymptotically AdS spacetimes in three dimensions. By focusing on a particular limit of the geometries where the horizons are exponentially close to each other, and with the three-boundary wormhole as our main example, we show that traversability between any two asymptotic regions in a multi-boundary wormhole can be achieved. We discuss how this construction differ from that of Gao-Jafferis-Wall and comment on its generalization to the case with non-trivial topologies. Third, we propose an experimental set-up that uses well-tested techniques in cavity optomechanics to observe the effects of the gravitational interaction between two quantum micro-mechanical oscillators on the interference pattern of cavity photons through shifts in the visibility of interfering photons. We show that the gravitational coupling leads to a quantifiable shift in the period and magnitude of the visibility whose observability is within reach of current technology. We discuss the feasibility of the set-up as well as the gravity-induced entanglement between the two oscillators. Finally, we propose a new approach to variational quantum eigensolver algorithms using the principles of measurement-based quantum computing. In contrast to the circuit-based model, our approach uses entangled resource states and local measurements to do the function evaluations. We illustrate this with two schemes. The first scheme shows how any circuit-based variational quantum eigensolver can be translated to a measurement-based one. The second scheme provides a new approach for constructing variational families that has no immediate analogue in circuit-based quantum computing. We discuss how both schemes offer problem-specific advantages in terms of the required resources and coherence times