Continuous Groups for Physicists

The book intends to focus on Lie group representations in the quantum context for graduate students and researchers taking courses in theoretical physics. Special emphasis is given to the explanation of the topics like Lie group families, spinors, real symplectic groups coherent states, their representations and Lie groups acting on space-time.

Continuous Groups for Physicists is written for graduate students as well as researchers working in the field of theoretical physics. The text has been designed uniquely and it balances coverage of advanced and non-standard topics with an equal focus on the basic concepts for a thorough understanding. The book describes the general theory of Lie groups and Lie algebras, the passage between them, and their unitary/ Hermitian representations in the quantum mechanical setting. The four infinite classical families of compact simple Lie groups and their representations are covered in detail. Readers will benefit from the discussions on topics like spinor representations of real orthogonal groups, the Schwinger representation of a group, induced representations, systems of coherent states, real symplectic groups important in quantum mechanics, Wigner''s theorem on symmetry operations in quantum mechanics, ray representations of Lie groups, and groups associated with non-relativistic and relativistic space-time.