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Critical phenomena arise in a wide variety of physical systems. Classi cal examples are the liquid-vapour critical point or the paramagnetic ferromagnetic transition. Further examples include multicomponent fluids and alloys, superfluids, superconductors, polymers and fully developed tur bulence and may even extend to the quark-gluon plasma and the early uni verse as a whole. Early theoretical investigators tried to reduce the problem to a very small number of degrees of freedom, such as the van der Waals equation and mean field approximations, culminating in Landau's general theory of critical phenomena. Nowadays, it is understood that the common ground for all these phenomena lies in the p...
The well-known Casimir effect has a direct analogue in systems near critical or multicritical points. Critical fluctuations in systems confined to finite geometries lead to attractive or repulsive forces between system boundaries. These forces influence the formation of wetting layers of liquid 4He or binary liquid mixtures near critical points in these fluids. With the aid of recently developed versions of the atomic force microscope, these forces appear to be directly measurable. The book contains an introduction to the physics of critical phenomena and reviews the most recent developments in the theory of finite-size scaling. A detailed discussion of the Casimir effect and related questions follows. The analysis of quantitative effects on the specific heat of critical films, the formation of wetting layers, and force measurements finish the presentation. This is perhaps the first book on the critical Casimir effect.
Most of the interesting and difficult problems in statistical mechanics arise when the constituent particles of the system interact with each other with pair or multipartiele energies. The types of behaviour which occur in systems because of these interactions are referred to as cooperative phenomena giving rise in many cases to phase transitions. This book and its companion volume (Lavis and Bell 1999, referred to in the text simply as Volume 1) are princi pally concerned with phase transitions in lattice systems. Due mainly to the insights gained from scaling theory and renormalization group methods, this subject has developed very rapidly over the last thirty years. ' In our choice of top...
The book contains review articles on recent advances in first-passage phenomena and applications contributed by leading international experts. It is intended for graduate students and researchers who are interested in learning about this intriguing and important topic.
1.1 Why Study Solitons? The last century of physics, which was initiated by Maxwell's completion of the theory of electromagnetism, can, with some justification, be called the era of linear physi cs. ~Jith few excepti ons, the methods of theoreti ca 1 phys ics have been dominated by linear equations (Maxwell, Schrodinger), linear mathematical objects (vector spaces, in particular Hilbert spaces), and linear methods (Fourier transforms, perturbation theory, linear response theory) . Naturally the importance of nonlinearity, beginning with the Navier-Stokes equations and continuing to gravitation theory and the interactions of par ticles in solids, nuclei, and quantized fields, was recognized....
The investigation of the properties of nonlinear systems is one of the fast deve loping areas of physics. In condensed matter physics this 'terra incognita' is approached from various starting points such as phase transitions and renormali zation group theory, nonlinear models, statistical mechanics and others. The study of the mutual interrelations of these disciplines is important in developing uni fying methods and models towards a better understanding of nonlinear systems. The present book collects the lectures and seminars delivered at the workshop on "Statics and Dynamics of Nonlinear Systems" held at the Centre for SCientific Culture "Ettore Majorana·" in Erice;· Italy, July 1 to 11...
The history of critical phenomena goes back to the year 1869 when Andrews discovered the critical point of carbon dioxide, located at about 31°C and 73 atmospheres pressure. In the neighborhood ofthis point the carbon dioxide was observed to become opalescent, that is, light is strongly scattered. This is nowadays interpreted as comingfrom the strong fluctuations of the system close to the critical point. Subsequently, a wide varietyofphysicalsystems were realized to display critical points as well. Ofparticular importance was the observation of a critical point in ferromagnetic iron by Curie. Further examples include multicomponent fluids and alloys, superfluids, superconductors, polymers ...
This first volume of Statistical Physics is an introduction to the theories of equilibrium statistical mechanics, whereas the second volume (Springer Ser. Solid-State Sci., Vol. 31) is devoted to non equilibrium theories. Particular emphasis is placed on fundamental principles and basic con cepts and ideas. We start with physical examples of probability and kinetics, and then describe the general principles of statistical mechanics, with appli cations to quantum statistics, imperfect gases, electrolytes, and phase tran sitions, including critical phenomena. Finally, ergodic problems, the me chanical basis of statistical mechanics, are presented. The original text was written in Japanese as a...
The workshop "Biologically Inspired Physics" was organized, with the support of the NATO Scientific Affairs Division and the Directorate-General for Science, Research and Development of the Commission of the European Communities, in order to review some subjects of physics of condensed matter which are inspired by biological problems or deal with biological systems, but which address physical questions. The main topics discussed in the meeting were: 1. Macromolecules: In particular, proteins and nucleic acids. Special emphasis was placed on modelling protein folding, where analogies with disordered systems in con densed matter (glasses, spin glasses) were suggested. It is not clear at this p...
This volume contains the proceedings of the Fourth Taniguchi International Symposium on the Theory of Condensed Matter, which was held at Senkari Semi nar House of Kwansei Gakuin Universi~y in Sanda-shi, Japan, during the period of 3-8 November 1981. The topic of the symposium was "Anderson rocalization," one of the most fundamental problems in condensed-matter physics. Since Anderson's classic paper was published in 1958, much theoretical and experimental effort has been performed to study the problem of electron localization in a random potential. Quite recently, Abrahams, Anderson, Licciardello, and Ramakrishnan proposed a scaling theory of the Anderson lo calization which made it possibl...