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Hopf and the qubit?two-level quantum systemsThe occurrence of the Hopf fibration in two-level quantum systems?systems that can be described using a two-dimensional complex Hilbert space, also nowadays known as qubits?was mentioned, e.g., by Penrose [36], and is described more extensively in [48]; so we can be brief and somewhat schematic about it here.We take the two-dimensional Hilbert space just to bewith its standard Hermitian inner product ≔. The states of the system are given by density matrices, i.e.,Hopf and mechanics?the harmonic oscillatorIt may surprise some that the simple two-dimensional isotropic classical harmonic oscillator provides an example of the occurrence of the Hopf fibration in physics. But indeed, its phase flow, restricted to a non-trivial energy shell, Hopf-fibers the latter! To see this easily, we scale everything such that the mass and the angular frequency of the oscillator become 1; the Hamiltonian then readswhence the equations of motionEmploying the usualHopf and General Relativity?Taub-NUT spaceAround 1950, G?del and Taub independently started the investigation of spatially homogeneous cosmological models in General Relativity. The ones constructed by them are space-timeshaving line elements of the form where the ωk are essentially left-invariant 1-forms on a three-dimensional Lie group and the product of forms in ds2 is symmetric tensor multiplication as usual. More precisely, , whereis some interval for τ, to be determined during the process ofHopf and twistors?Robinson congruencesThe concept of twistor can, according to its inventor, Penrose, be introduced in a number of ways, and all conformally invariant field laws in flat space-time can be reformulated in terms of twistors, generating new ways of looking at such laws; this has already been very fruitful in the past in many cases.Clearly, this is not the place to give any of the different ways of approaching or using twistors. We rather pick out one way of representing a twistor space-time-geometrically and highlightHopf and Wignerism?helicity representationsIn all examples discussed so far, the bundle, or total, spacewas of immediate importance and thus in the forefront of the formalism; the base space, on the other hand, did figure in the qubit case and is used in technical treatments of NUT space that work with the space of Killing trajectories. In the two examples to follow, it will be the other way round: it is the base space that is in the foreground, while the bundle space appears as derived, e.g., via a patching construction. TheHopf and magnetic monopolesThis example of our collection is probably the first one that caught the attention of a larger number of physicists. As announced, the Hopf fibration comes here from a bottom-up construction.In his 1931 article ?Quantised Singularities in the Electromagnetic Field? (magnetic monopoles), Dirac [19] starts out looking for a generalization of wave mechanics in which the wave function does not have a definite value for its phase difference between two points. In the 1970s, it was realized [50] thatHopf and the Dirac equation9The two-level quantum systems of Section 2 may be considered, in particular, as describing the spin states of a non-relativistic spin-particle?i.e., one ignores its spatial degrees of freedom. If the latter is not done, one must write spinorial wave functions, subject to appropriate wave equations. In the relativistic regime, the relevant wave equation is the Dirac equation. We shall point out here that the Hopf fibration has significance also in this context. Most directly this comes aboutAcknowledgementsI am indebted at least to the following persons for directly or indirectly educating me on matters included in this article: R. Beig, I. Bengtsson, P. Nurowski, R. Penrose, H. Rumpf, W. Simon, and A. Trautman. In particular, important information came from participants of a meeting in honor of E.T. Newman held in June 2001 at the Banach Center, Warsaw; I thank the organizers of that meeting for inviting me there to present a preliminary version of this article, for hospitality, andReferences (51) M. Lachi?ze-Rey et al. Cosmic topology Phys. Rep. (1995) E. Lubkin Geometric definition of gauge invariance Ann. Phys. (1963) V. 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Dirac, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, Clarendon Press, Oxford,...Cited by (98) Spatially structured light fields and their propagation manipulation 2023, Progress in OpticsCosmological electromagnetic Hopfions2024, Physica ScriptaHopfions of massive gauge bosons in early universe2024, arXivPhotonic Spin Hopfions and Monopole Loops2023, Physical Review LettersA, B, C of three-qubit entanglement: Three vectors to control it all2023, arXivQuantum Black Holes in Conformal Dilaton?Higgs Gravity on Warped Spacetimes 2023, UniverseView all citing articles on ScopusView full textCopyright ? 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. 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