The material presented in this invaluable textbook has been tested in two courses. One of these is a graduate-level survey of statistical physics; the other, a rather personal perspective on critical behavior. Thus, this book defines a progression starting at the book-learning part of graduate education and ending in the midst of topics at the research level. To supplement the research-level side the book includes some research papers. Several of these are classics in the field, including a suite of six works on self-organized criticality and complexity, a pair on diffusion-limited aggregation, some papers on correlations near critical points, a few of the basic sources on the development of the real-space renormalization group, and several papers on magnetic behavior in a plain geometry. In addition, the author has included a few of his own papers.

The material presented in this invaluable textbook has been tested in two courses. One of these is a graduate-level survey of statistical physics; the other, a rather personal perspective on critical behavior. Thus, this book defines a progression starting at the book-learning part of graduate education and ending in the midst of topics at the research level. To supplement the research-level side the book includes some research papers. Several of these are classics in the field, including a suite of six works on self-organized criticality and complexity, a pair on diffusion-limited aggregation, some papers on correlations near critical points, a few of the basic sources on the development of the real-space renormalization group, and several papers on magnetic behavior in a plain geometry. In addition, the author has included a few of his own papers.

Low-dimensional statistical models are instrumental in improving our understanding of emerging fields, such as quantum computing and cryptography, complex systems, and quantum fluids. This book of lectures by international leaders in the field sets these issues into a larger and more coherent theoretical perspective than is currently available.

This book presents mathematical methods and tools which are useful for physicists and engineers: response functions, Kramers-Kronig relations, Green's functions, saddle point approximation. The derivations emphasize the underlying physical arguments and interpretations without any loss of rigor. General introductions describe the main features of the methods, while connections and analogies between a priori different problems are discussed. They are completed by detailed applications in many topics including electromagnetism, hydrodynamics, statistical physics, quantum mechanics, etc. Exercises are also proposed, and their solutions are sketched. A self-contained reading of the book is favored by avoiding too technical derivations, and by providing a short presentation of important tools in the appendices. It is addressed to undergraduate and graduate students in physics, but it can also be used by teachers, researchers and engineers.

This text provides a thoroughly modern graduate-level introduction to the theory of critical behaviour. It begins with a brief review of phase transitions in simple systems, then goes on to introduce the core ideas of the renormalisation group.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the state of the art in the philosophy of physics. It comprisess 54 self-contained chapters written by leading philosophers of physics at both senior and junior levels, making it the most thorough and detailed volume of its type on the market – nearly every major perspective in the field is represented. The Companion’s 54 chapters are organized into 12 parts. The first seven parts cover all of the major physical theories investigated by philosophers of physics today, and the last five explore key themes that unite the study of these theories. I. Newtonian Mechanics II. Special Relativity III. General Relativity IV. Non-Relativistic Quantum Theory V. Quantum Field Theory VI. Quantum Gravity VII. Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics VIII. Explanation IX. Intertheoretic Relations X. Symmetries XI. Metaphysics XII. Cosmology The difficulty level of the chapters has been carefully pitched so as to offer both accessible summaries for those new to philosophy of physics and standard reference points for active researchers on the front lines. An introductory chapter by the editors maps out the field, and each part also begins with a short summary that places the individual chapters in context. The volume will be indispensable to any serious student or scholar of philosophy of physics.

Computational biology has developed rapidly during the last two decades following the genomic revolution which culminated in the sequencing of the human genome. More than ever it has developed into a field which embraces computational methods from different branches of the exact sciences: pure and applied mathematics, computer science, theoretical physics. This Second Edition provides a solid introduction to the techniques of statistical mechanics for graduate students and researchers in computational biology and biophysics. Material has been reorganized to clarify equilbrium and nonequilibrium aspects of biomolecular systems Content has been expanded, in particular in the treatment of the electrostatic interactions of biomolecules and the application of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to biomolecules New network-based approaches for the study of proteins are presented. All treated topics are put firmly in the context of the current research literature, allowing the reader to easily follow an individual path into a specific research field. Exercises and Tasks accompany the presentations of the topics with the intention of enabling the readers to test their comprehension of the developed basic concepts.