Statistical Physics of Fields (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780521873413)

While many scientists are familiar with fractals, fewer are familiar with scale-invariance and universality which underlie the ubiquity of their shapes. These properties may emerge from the collective behaviour of simple fundamental constituents, and are studied using statistical field theories. Initial chapters connect the particulate perspective developed in the companion volume, to the coarse grained statistical fields studied here. Based on lectures taught by Professor Kardar at MIT, this textbook demonstrates how such theories are formulated and studied. Perturbation theory, exact solutions, renormalization groups, and other tools are employed to demonstrate the emergence of scale invariance and universality, and the non-equilibrium dynamics of interfaces and directed paths in random media are discussed. Ideal for advanced graduate courses in statistical physics, it contains an integrated set of problems, with solutions to selected problems at the end of the book and a complete set available to lecturers at www.cambridge.org/9780521873413.

Author: Mehran Kardar
ISBN-10: 052187341X
ISBN-13: 9780521873413
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/07/2007
Pages: 370
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.95lbs
Size: 9.80h x 7.30w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Scitech Book News 06/01/2008 pg. 41