Advances Chem Physics V 99

In Resonances, Instability, and Irreversibility: The Liouville Space Extension of Quantum Mechanics

T. Petrosky and I. Prigogine

Unstable Systems in Generalized Quantum Theory

E. C. G. Sudarshan, Charles B. Chiu, and G. Bhamathi

Resonances and Dilatation Analyticity in Liouville Space

Erkki J. Brdndas

Time, Irreversibility, and Unstable Systems in Quantum Physics

E. Eisenberg and L. P. Horwitz

Quantum Systems with Diagonal Singularity

I. Antoniou and Z. Suchanecki

Nonadiabatic Crossing of Decaying Levels

V. V. and Vl. V. Kocharovsky and S. Tasaki

Can We Observe Microscopic Chaos in the Laboratory?

Pierre Gaspard

Proton Nonlocality and Decoherence in Condensed Matter — Predictions and Experimental Results

C. A. Chatzidimitriou-Dreismann

"We are at a most interesting moment in the history of science. Classical science emphasized equilibrium, stability, and time reversibility. Now we see instabilities, fluctuations, evolution on all levels of observations. This change of perspective requires new tools, new concepts. This volume invites the reader not to an enumeration of final achievements of contemporary science, but to an excursion to science in the making." — from the Foreword by I. Prigogine

What are the dynamical roots of irreversibility? How can past and future be distinguished on the fundamental level of description? Are human beings the children of time — or its progenitors? In recent years, a growing number of chemists and physicists have agreed that the solution to the problem of irreversibility requires an extension of classical and quantum mechanics. There is, however, no consensus on which direction thisextension should take to include the dynamical description of irreversible processes.

Resonances, Instability, and Irreversibility surveys recent attempts — both direct and indirect — to address the problem of irreversibility. Internationally recognized researche