Group duality and its applications in nuclear physics.
Contributors: Rowe, David J. (Supervisor).
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 167
Subjects: Physics Theses.
Description: This thesis presents a physical perspective on group duality. We explain in detail some of the most important dualities that are of interest in nuclear physics, the relationships among these dualities, and how the theory of dual pairs facilitates relevant physical calculations in the context of nuclear physics. The dualities are classified according to whether they apply to fermion systems, boson systems, or both. The role of duality in the determination of tensor products, branching rules, and physically acceptable product wave functions---three fundamental operations in the physical application of symmetry analysis---is explained.We also explain the various conceptions of plethysm (one of which is the symmetrized product of representations), and how plethysm is related to duality. Applications of plethysm are discussed, primarily in the context of nuclear physics. A new method for the calculation of plethysms and the associated algorithm, are described. This new method has been implemented via a MAPLE program, so that plethysms (as well as the other standard operations involving Schur functions) can now be computed interactively in a MAPLE environment.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Electronic version licensed for access by U. of T. users.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-06, Section: B, page: 3201.