This book investigates the impact of noise upon the emergence and sustenance of patterns. “Patterns” loosely refers to coherent spatial structures, including fronts, as well as temporal patterns. The crucial role of nonlinearities is highlighted and expanded upon in the context of dynamical system frameworks. The author's familiarity with chaos theory, statistical physics and nonlinear science is reflected in the highly interdisciplinary character of the text. Model equations and experiments taken from fluid dynamics, semiconductor devices, biophysics and statistical mechanics complement theoretical concepts.It should be of great value to researchers and graduate students who desire a quick introduction to the subject. Excursions into emerging fields such as traffic flow simulations and game theory serve to broaden the scope and to encourage the exploration of sundry topics.

This book provides a broad introduction to gauge field theories formulated on a space-time lattice, and in particular of QCD. It serves as a textbook for advanced graduate students, and also provides the reader with the necessary analytical and numerical techniques to carry out research on his own. Although the analytic calculations are sometimes quite demanding and go beyond an introduction, they are discussed in sufficient detail, so that the reader can fill in the missing steps. The book also introduces the reader to interesting problems which are currently under intensive investigation. Whenever possible, the main ideas are exemplified in simple models, before extending them to realistic theories. Special emphasis is placed on numerical results obtained from pioneering work. These are displayed in a great number of figures. Beyond the necessary amendments and slight extensions of some sections in the third edition, the fourth edition includes an expanded section on Calorons — a subject which has been under intensive investigation during the last twelve years.

This book begins by introducing the effective field approach, the simplest approach to phase transitions. It provides an intuitive approximation to the physics of such diverse phenomena as liquid-vapor transitions, ferromagnetism, superconductivity, order-disorder in alloys, ferroelectricity, superfluidity and ferroelasticity. The connection between the effective field approach and Landau's theory is stressed.The main coverage is devoted to specific applications of the effective field concept to ferroelectric systems, both hydrogen bonded ferroelectrics, like those in the TGS family, and oxide ferroelectrics, like pure and mixed perovskites.

Supersymmetry is a symmetry which combines bosons and fermions in the same multiplet of a larger group which unites the transformations of this symmetry with that of spacetime. Thus every bosonic particle must have a fermionic partner and vice versa. Since this is not what is observed, this symmetry with inherent theoretical advantages must be badly broken. It is hoped that the envisaged collider experiments at CERN will permit a first experimental test, which is expected to revive the interest in supersymmetry considerably.This revised edition of the highly successful text of 20 years ago provides an introduction to supersymmetry, and thus begins with a substantial chapter on spacetime symmetries and spinors. Following this, graded algebras are introduced, and thereafter the supersymmetric extension of the spacetime Poincaré algebra and its representations. The Wess-Zumino model, superfields, supersymmetric Lagrangians, and supersymmetric gauge theories are treated in detail in subsequent chapters. Finally the breaking of supersymmetry is addressed meticulously. All calculations are presented in detail so that the reader can follow every step.

The phase structure of particle physics shows up in matter at extremely high densities and/or temperatures as they were reached in the early universe, shortly after the big bang, or in heavy-ion collisions, as they are performed nowadays in laboratory experiments. In contrast to phase transitions of condensed matter physics, the underlying fundamental theories are better known than their macroscopic manifestations in phase transitions. These theories are quantum chromodynamics for the strong interaction part and the electroweak part of the Standard Model for the electroweak interaction. It is their non-Abelian gauge structure that makes it a big challenge to predict the type of phase conversion between phases of different symmetries and different particle contents. The book is about a variety of analytical and numerical tools that are needed to study the phase structure of particle physics. To these belong convergent and asymptotic expansions in strong and weak couplings, dimensional reduction, renormalization group studies, gap equations, Monte Carlo simulations with and without fermions, finite-size and finite-mass scaling analyses, and the approach of effective actions as supplement to first-principle calculations.

This volume develops the techniques of perturbative QCD in great pedagogical detail starting with field theory. Aside from extensive treatments of the renormalization group technique, The operator product expansion formalism and their applications to short-distance reactions, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to gauge theories. Examples and exercises are provided to amplify the discussions on important topics. This is an ideal textbook on the subject of quantum chromodynamics and is essential for researchers and graduate students in high energy physics, nuclear physics and mathematical physics.

This monograph represents an extension of the author's original PhD thesis and includes a more thorough discussion on the concepts and mathematics behind his research works on the foam model, as applied to studying issues of phase stability and elasticity for various non-closed packed structures found in fuzzy and colloidal crystals, as well as on a renormalization-group analysis regarding the critical behavior of loop polymers upon which topological constraints are imposed. The common thread behind these two research works is their demonstration of the importance and effectiveness of utilizing geometrical and topological concepts for modeling and understanding soft systems undergoing phase transitions.