Contents: Percolation and Localization (D J Thouless)Disordered Systems — Experimental Viewpoint (J Joffrin)Lectures on Amorphous Systems (P W Anderson)Elementary Algebraic Topology Related to the Theory of Defects and Textures (V Poenaru)Models of Disordered Materials (S Kirkpatrick)Thermal and Geometrical Critical Phenomena in Random Systems (T C Lukensky)A Short Guide to Polymer Physics (P-G de Gennes)and 9 seminars Readership: Graduate students and researchers in condensed matter physics.

Impurities, disorder or amorphous systems – ill-condensed matter – are mostly considered inconveniences in the study of materials, which is otherwise heavily based on idealized perfect crystals. The Kondo effect and the scaling theory of localization are among the fundamental and early discoveries which revealed the novelty hidden in impure or disordered systems. Recent advances in condensed matter physics have emphasized the role of topology, spin-orbit coupling, and certain discrete symmetries such as time reversal in many physical phenomena. These have irreversibly transformed the essential ideas and purview of condensed matter physics, both in theoretical and experimental directions. However, many of these recent developments and their implications are limited to, or by, ideas that pertain to clean systems. This thesis deals with various aspects of these new developments, but in the case of unclean systems. The author introduces new ideas such as amorphous topological insulators, fractalized metals and fractionalized spins.

Universality is the property that systems of radically different composition and structure exhibit similar behavior. The appearance of universal laws in simple critical systems is now well established experimentally, but the search for universality has not slackened. This book aims to define the current status of research in this field and to identify the most promising directions for further investigations. On the theoretical side, numerical simulations and analytical arguments have led to expectations of universal behavior in several nonequilibrium systems, e.g. aggregation, electric discharges, and viscous flows. Experimental work is being done on "geometric" phase transitions, e.g. aggregation and gelation, in real systems. The contributions to this volume allow a better understanding of chaotic systems, turbulent flows, aggregation phenomena, fractal structures, and quasicrystals. They demonstrate how the concepts of renormalization group transformations, scale invariance, and multifractality are useful for describing inhomogeneous materials and irreversible phenomena.

This book presents the latest research in two leading areas of physics - astrophysics and condensed matter.

This comprehensive, handbook-style survey of diffusion in condensed matter gives detailed insight into diffusion as the process of particle transport due to stochastic movement. It is understood and presented as a phenomenon of crucial relevance for a large variety of processes and materials. In this book, all aspects of the theoretical fundamentals, experimental techniques, highlights of current developments and results for solids, liquids and interfaces are presented.

These volumes contain the invited and contributed talks of the first general Conference of the Condensed Matter Division of the European Physical Society, which took place at the campus of the University of Antwerpen (Universitaire Instelling Antwerpen) from April 9 till 11, 1980. The invited talks give a broad perspective of the current state in Europe of research in condensed matter physics. New developments and advances in experiments as well as theory are reported for 28 topics. Some of these developments, such as the recent stabilization of mono-atomic hydrogen, with the challenging prospect of Bose condensation, can be considered as major break throughs in condensed matter physics. Of the 65 invited lecturers, 54 have submitted a manuscript. The remaining talks are published as abstracts. The contents of this first volume consists of 9 plenary papers. Among the topics treated in these papers are: - electronic structure computations of iron the density functional theory hydrogen in amorphous Si topologically disordered materials nuclear antiferromagnetism stabilization of mono-atomic hydrogen gas covalent and metallic glasses nonlinear excitations in ferroelectrics.

This volume contains the lectures given at the Third Gordon Godfrey International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Novel Condensed Matter Systems which was held at The University of New South Wales July 12-17, 1993. Lecturers from Asia, Australia, Europe and North America gave a total of twenty-nine lectures which were spread over the five days. Unfortunately we were not able to include in this volume the lectures of S. Das Sarma from the University of Maryland on "Non-Equilibrium Growth as a Self-Organised Phenomenon" due to constraints of time. The workshops have been held annually since 1991 in Sydney, each covering a novel research area in condensed matter physics that is of topical interest. Australia has a strong tradition of research in condensed matter physics. The workshops are jointly organised by the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) and the Department of Theoretical Physics, Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering at the Australian National University (Canberra). The late Gordon God frey was an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of New South Wales. He bequeathed his estate for the promotion and teaching of theoretical physics within the university. The primary purpose of each workshop is to expose post-graduate students in physics to both informal interaction and formal lectures from recognised international leaders in topical research areas. Past experience has demonstrated again and again that to be informed about a new field there is no substitute for personal contact and interaction.