Table of Contents

• Prelude
• Kiss precise
• The fractal family
• Geometry, number theory, and the butterfly: Friendly numbers and kissing circles
• The Apollonian-butterfly connection (ABC)
• Quasiperiodic patterns and the butterfly
• The quantum world
• A quantum-mechanical marriage and its unruly child
• A different kind of quantization: The quantum Hall effect
• Topology and topological invariants: Preamble to the topological aspects of the quantum Hall
• The Berry phase and the quantum Hall effect
• The kiss precise and precise Quantization
• The art of tinkering
• The butterfly in the laboratory
• Gallery
• Divertimento
• Gratitude
• Poetic
• Coda
• Selected Bibliography

About the Author

Born in Amritsar, India, Indu Satija grew up in Bombay. After graduating with a Masters degree in physics from Bombay University, she came to New York to get her doctorate in theoretical physics at Columbia University. Currently, she is a physics professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Her recent areas of research include topological insulators, Bose-Einstein condensates, and solitons. She has published numerous scientific articles; this, however, is her first book. Physics is Indu's first love, and the outdoors is her second. She lives in Potomac, a suburb of Washington, DC, with her husband Sushil, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Both Indu and Sushil are marathon runners, and they enjoy hiking and biking as well. They have two children: Rahul, who is a biologist, and Neena, who is an investigative reporter.

Reviews

"It's not often that I will finish a book, that it leaves me amazed at the richness and expanse of its ideas... and that I have to confess I did not understand fair chunks of it. Butterfly in the Quantum World is such a book." - Dilip D'Souza for LiveMint