Statistical Physics Statics, Dynamics and Renormalization

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 & 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 & 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, & several papers on magnetic behavior in a plain geometry. In addition, the author has included a few of his own papers. Contents: Fundamentals of Statistical Physics: The Lectures - A Survey; One Particle & Many; Gaussian Distributions; Quantum Mechanics & Lattices; Random Dynamics: Diffusion & Hopping; From Hops to Statistical Mechanics; Correlations & Response; More Statistical Mechanics: Statistical Thermodynamics; Fermi, Bose, & Other; Phase Transitions: Overview of Phase Transitions; Mean Field Theory of Critical Behavior; Continuous Phase Transitions; Renormalization in One Dimension; Real Space Renormalization Techniques; Duality; Planar Model & Coulomb Systems; XY Model, Renormalization, & Duality. Readership: Undergraduates, postgraduate students & researchers in physics.