This book is based on research carried out by the author in close collabora tion with a number of colleagues. In particular, I wish to thank Per Bak, A. John Berlinsky, Hans C. Fogedby, Barry Frank, S. 1. Knak Jensen, David Mukamel, David Pink, and Martin Zuckermann for fruitful and extremely stimulating cooperation. It is a pleasure for me to note that active interaction with most of these colleagues is still continuing. The work has been performed at several different institutions, notably the Department of Chemistry, Aarhus University, Denmark, and the Depart ment of Physics, University of British Columb~a, Canada. I wish to thank the Department of Chemistry at Aarhus University for providing me with splen did research facilities over the years. From May 1980 to August 1981, I visited the Department of Physics at the University of British Columbia and I would like to express my sincere gratitude to members ofthe department for provi ding me with excellent working conditions. My special thanks are due to Professor Myer Bloom who introduced me to the field of phase transitions in biological membranes and in whose biomembrane group I found an extre mely stimulating scientific atmosphere happily married with a most agreeable social climate. During the last two years when a major part ofthis work was carried out, I was supported by AlS De Danske Spritfabrikker through their Jubilreumsle gat of 1981. Their support is gratefully acknowledged.

The field of phase transitions and critical phenomena continues to be active in research, producing a steady stream of interesting and fruitful results. No longer an area of specialist interest, it has acquired a central focus in condensed matter studies. The major aim of this serial is to provide review articles that can serve as standard references for research workers in the field, and for graduate students and others wishing to obtain reliable information on important recent developments.The two review articles in this volume complement each other in a remarkable way. Both deal with what might be called the modern geometricapproach to the properties of macroscopic systems. The first article by Georgii (et al.) describes how recent advances in the application ofgeometric ideas leads to a better understanding of pure phases and phase transitions in equilibrium systems. The second article by Alava (et al.)deals with geometrical aspects of multi-body systems in a hands-on way, going beyond abstract theory to obtain practical answers. Thecombination of computers and geometrical ideas described in this volume will doubtless play a major role in the development of statisticalmechanics in the twenty-first century.

As an introductory account of the theory of phase transitions and critical phenomena, this book reflects lectures given by the authors to graduate students at their departments and is thus classroom-tested to help beginners enter the field. Most parts are written as self-contained units and every new concept or calculation is explained in detail without assuming prior knowledge of the subject. The book significantly enhances and revises a Japanese version which is a bestseller in the Japanese market and is considered a standard textbook in the field. It contains new pedagogical presentations of field theory methods, including a chapter on conformal field theory, and various modern developments hard to find in a single textbook on phase transitions. Exercises are presented as the topics develop, with solutions found at the end of the book, making the text useful for self-teaching, as well as for classroom learning.

First published in 1971, this highly popular text is devoted to the interdisciplinary area of critical phenomena, with an emphasis on liquid-gas and ferromagnetic transitions. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students in thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and solid state physics, aswell as researchers in physics, mathematics, chemistry, and materials science, will welcome this paperback edition of Stanley's acclaimed text.

Covering the elementary aspects of the physics of phases transitions and the renormalization group, this popular book is widely used both for core graduate statistical mechanics courses as well as for more specialized courses. Emphasizing understanding and clarity rather than technical manipulation, these lectures de-mystify the subject and show precisely "how things work." Goldenfeld keeps in mind a reader who wants to understand why things are done, what the results are, and what in principle can go wrong. The book reaches both experimentalists and theorists, students and even active researchers, and assumes only a prior knowledge of statistical mechanics at the introductory graduate level.Advanced, never-before-printed topics on the applications of renormalization group far from equilibrium and to partial differential equations add to the uniqueness of this book.