In each generation, scientists must redefine their fields: abstracting, simplifying and distilling the previous standard topics to make room for new advances and methods. Sethna's book takes this step for statistical mechanics - a field rooted in physics and chemistry whose ideas and methods are now central to information theory, complexity, and modern biology. Aimed at advanced undergraduates and early graduate students in all of these fields, Sethna limits his main presentation to the topics that future mathematicians and biologists, as well as physicists and chemists, will find fascinating and central to their work. The amazing breadth of the field is reflected in the author's large supply of carefully crafted exercises, each an introduction to a whole field of study: everything from chaos through information theory to life at the end of the universe.

Sethna distills the core ideas of statistical mechanics to make room for new advances important to information theory, complexity, and modern biology. He explores everything from chaos through to life at the end of the universe.

Sethna's book distills the core ideas of statistical mechanics to make room for new advances important to information theory, complexity, and modern biology. Aimed at advanced undergraduates and early graduate students, Sethna's text explores everything from chaos through information theory to life at the end of the universe.

The book provides an introduction to the physics which underlies phase transitions and to the theoretical techniques currently at our disposal for understanding them. It will be useful for advanced undergraduates, for post-graduate students undertaking research in related fields, and for established researchers in experimental physics, chemistry, and metallurgy as an exposition of current theoretical understanding. - ;Recent developments have led to a good understanding of universality; why phase transitions in systems as diverse as magnets, fluids, liquid crystals, and superconductors can be brought under the same theoretical umbrella and well described by simple models. This book describes the physics underlying universality and then lays out the theoretical approaches now available for studying phase transitions. Traditional techniques, mean-field theory, series expansions, and the transfer matrix, are described; the Monte Carlo method is covered, and two chapters are devoted to the renormalization group, which led to a break-through in the field. The book will be useful as a textbook for a course in `Phase Transitions', as an introduction for graduate students undertaking research in related fields, and as an overview for scientists in other disciplines who work with phase transitions but who are not aware of the current tools in the armoury of the theoretical physicist. - ;Introduction; Statistical mechanics and thermodynamics; Models; Mean-field theories; The transfer matrix; Series expansions; Monte Carlo simulations; The renormalization group; Implementations of the renormalization group. -

This book discusses the computational approach in modern statistical physics in a clear and accessible way and demonstrates its close relation to other approaches in theoretical physics. Individual chapters focus on subjects as diverse as the hard sphere liquid, classical spin models, single quantum particles and Bose-Einstein condensation. Contained within the chapters are in-depth discussions of algorithms, ranging from basic enumeration methods to modern Monte Carlo techniques. The emphasis is on orientation, with discussion of implementation details kept to a minimum. Illustrations, tables and concise printed algorithms convey key information, making the material very accessible. The book is completely self-contained and graphs and tables can readily be reproduced, requiring minimal computer code. Most sections begin at an elementary level and lead on to the rich and difficult problems of contemporary computational and statistical physics. The book will be of interest to a wide range of students, teachers and researchers in physics and the neighbouring sciences. An accompanying CD allows incorporation of the book's content (illustrations, tables, schematic programs) into the reader's own presentations.

Statistical physics has its origins in attempts to describe the thermal properties of matter in terms of its constituent particles, and has played a fundamental role in the development of quantum mechanics. Based on lectures taught by Professor Kardar at MIT, this textbook introduces the central concepts and tools of statistical physics. It contains a chapter on probability and related issues such as the central limit theorem and information theory, and covers interacting particles, with an extensive description of the van der Waals equation and its derivation by mean field approximation. It also contains an integrated set of problems, with solutions to selected problems at the end of the book and a complete set of solutions is available to lecturers on a password protected website at www.cambridge.org/9780521873420. A companion volume, Statistical Physics of Fields, discusses non-mean field aspects of scaling and critical phenomena, through the perspective of renormalization group.

Statistical mechanics is our tool for deriving the laws that emerge from complex systems. Sethna's text distills the subject to be accessible to those in all realms of science and engineering — avoiding extensive use of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and molecular physics. Statistical mechanics explains how bacteria search for food, and how DNA replication is proof-read in biology; optimizes data compression, and explains transitions in complexity in computer science; explains the onset of chaos, and launched random matrix theory in mathematics; addresses extreme events in engineering; and models pandemics and language usage in the social sciences. Sethna's exercises introduce physicists to these triumphs and a hundred others — broadening the horizons of scholars both practicing and nascent. Flipped classrooms and remote learning can now rely on 33 pre-class exercises that test reading comprehension (Emergent vs. fundamental; Weirdness in high dimensions; Aging, entropy and DNA), and 70 in-class activities that illuminate and broaden knowledge (Card shuffling; Human correlations; Crackling noises). Science is awash in information, providing ready access to definitions, explanations, and pedagogy. Sethna's text focuses on the tools we use to create new laws, and on the fascinating simple behavior in complex systems that statistical mechanics explains.