No label defined (Q4337975)

It is still an open question whether supersymmetry in its original formulation as an extension of Poincaré symmetry is a fundamental symmetry of the physical world. On the other hand a more general notion of supersymmetry -- not necessarily associated with spinors -- is certainly present even in the simplest quantum mechanical models and provides a powerful tool for their study. This state of affairs is well reflected in this monograph of which three quarters deal with supersymmetric quantum mechanics and ``superclassical'' mechanics and only the last quarter with supersymmetric field theory. This selection of topics makes the book unique not only in the German literature. The concept of the book is that of a textbook for physics students and an elementary introduction for working physicists, and it serves these purposes quite well. It is definitely not aimed at mathematicians seeking a text on ``supermathematics'', the emphasis being on working knowledge rather than foundations. This is a voluminous book with a broad scope, assuming only a knowledge of elementary quantum mechanics on the side of the reader. Not only supermathematics and spinors, but also group theory and canonical classical mechanics of unconstrained and constrained systems are developed from scratch. With so many subjects packed into one volume, the expert reader may be dissatisfied occasionally, but there are very few mistakes, mostly misprints. We conclude by listing the chapter titles: 1. Introduction, 2. Bose-Fermi supersymmetry, 3. Supersymmetric quantum mechanics, 4. Mathematics with supernumbers, 5. Symmetries, groups and Lie algebras, 6. Classical mechanics and supersymmetry, 7. Groups and relativity, 8. Supersymmetry in relativistic quantum mechanics, 9. Supergroups and SUSY particles, 10. From superfield to Lagrangian, 11. SUSY models.