Direct and Inverse Problems

Rapid progress in quantum theory brings us new important results which are often not immediately clear to all who need them. But fortunately, this is also followed by simplifications and unifications of our previous concepts. The inverse problem method ("e;The most beautiful idea of the XX-th century"e; - Zakharov et aI., 1980) has just both these aspects. It is rather astonishing that it took 50 years after the foundation of quantum mechanics for the creation of the "e;pictures"e; showing the direct connection of obser- vables with interactions. Recently, illustrations of this type began to appear in the literature (e. g., how potentials are deformed with thc shift of one energy level or change of some resonance reduced width). Although they are transparent to those studying the quantum world and can be included within the necessary elements of quantum literacy, they are still largely unknown even to many specialists. For the first time, the most interesting of these pictures enriching our quantum intuition are col- lected here and placed at your disposal. The readers of this monograph have the advantage of getting the latest information which became available after the publication of the Russian edition. It has been incor- porated here in the simplest presentation possible. For example, new sections con- cerning exactly solvable models, including the multi-channel, multi-dimensional ones and with time dependent potentials have been added. The first attempts in solving the three-body inverse problem are also mentioned.