Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Synopsis
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.
Booknews
Kadanoff (physics and mathematics, U. of Chicago) presents a textbook that has been tested in a graduate survey of statistical physics and another offering a rather personal perspective on critical behavior. He begins at the book-learning part of graduate education and ends with topics at the research level supplemented with some research papers. He includes more material than can reasonably be covered in one quarter, or even two, in order to allow instructors to tailor their courses more finely. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)