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Books > Science & Mathematics > Physics > Thermodynamics & statistical physics > Statistical physics
This text takes readers in a clear and progressive format from simple to recent and advanced topics in pure and applied probability such as contraction and annealed properties of non-linear semi-groups, functional entropy inequalities, empirical process convergence, increasing propagations of chaos, central limit, and Berry Esseen type theorems as well as large deviation principles for strong topologies on path-distribution spaces. Topics also include a body of powerful branching and interacting particle methods.
One service mathematics has rendered the 'Et BIOi. .... si j'avait su comment en revenir. human race. It has put common sense back je n'y serais point aile.' Jules Verne where it belongs. on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled 'discarded non The series is divergent; therefore we may be sense'. able to do something with it. Eric T. Bell O. Heaviside Math@matics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non Iinearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other parts and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics .. .'; 'One service logic has rendered com puter science .. .'; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics .. .'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'etre of this series."
Once upon a time, science was not divided into disciplines as we know it today. There was no distinction between so-called social and natural sciences, not to mention the fragmentation of the latter into physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. According to legend, the scientists those days would do their research in whatever environment they happened to find comfortable, which more often than not was in bathtubs or giant hot tubs - remember Archimedes! Then, somehow, these days we find ourselves compartmentalized into different departments in our universities, or divisions in our research institutes. (We suspect, for one thing, that is to ensure that we will get our paychecks delivered on time at the end of each month. ) Anyway, as anyone who has worked in the real world knows: when one is confronted with a completely new problem or phenomenon, it is usually impossible to neatly assign the problem to physics, chemistry, or, for that matter, computer science. One needs to recall and fuse together the knowledge one learned before and, if that alone is insufficient, to consult experts in other areas. This points to the shortcomings of the compartmentalization of knowledge in our educational systems. In recent years, something has changed. Under the banner of Complex Systems, some brave souls are not afraid to tackle problems that are considered intractable by others, and dare to venture out of their trained disciplines or departments to which they are attached.
Recent years have seen a growing interest in and activity at the interface between physics and biology, with the realization that both subjects have a great deal to learn from and to teach to one another. A particularly promising aspect of this interface concerns the area of cooperative phenomena and phase transitions. The present book addresses both the structure and motion of biological materials and the increasingly complex behaviour that arises out of interactions in large systems, giving rise to self organization, adaptation, selection and evolution: concepts of interest not only to biology and living systems but also within condensed matter physics. The approach adopted by Physics of Biomaterials: Fluctuations, Self Assembly and Evolution is tutorial, but the book is fully up to date with the latest research. Written at a level appropriate to graduate researchers, preferably with a background either in condensed matter physics or theoretical or physically-oriented experimental biology.
What is thermodynamics? What does statistical physics teach us? In the pages of this slim book, we confront the answers. The reader will discover that where thermodynami cs provi des a 1 arge scal e, macroscopi c theory of the ef fects of temperature on physical systems, statistical mechanics provides the microscopic analysis of these effects which, invariably, are the results of thermal disorder. A number of systems in nature undergo dramatic changes in aspect and in their properties when subjected to changes in ambient temperature or pres sure, or when electric or magnetic fields are applied. The ancients already knew that a liquid, a solid, or a gas can represent different states of the same matter. But what is meant by "state"? It is here that the systematic study of magnetic materials has provided one of the best ways of examining this question, which is one of the principal concerns of statistical physics (alias "statistical mechanics") and of modern thermodynamics."
The concept of this book was developed during the Winter Seminar held in the Austrian mountains at the Alpengasthof Zeinisjoch, Tirol-Vorarlberg, from February 27 to March 3, 1988. Leading experts and advanced students in math ematics, physics, chemistry and computer science met to present and discuss their most recent results in an informal seminar. These were the circumstances that led to the idea of compiling some of the essential contributions presented at this seminar together with others describing basic features of "optimal struc tures in heterogeneous reaction systems". The aim of this book is to present the scientific results of the intensive work carried out in each of the specific fields of research. Each contribution therefore presents the current state of the art together with a deeper treatment enabling a more comprehensive understanding of that particular field of work. The common ideas which unite all the different contributions are already ex pressed in the title of this book. The nature of heterogeneous reaction systems is quite varied. An example is provided by the chemical systems such as noble metal particles which may act as heterogeneous catalysts for gaseous chemical compounds. Under these circumstances the metal particles and/or their sur faces may undergo phase transitions during reaction. Imbihl and Plath report on special catalytic systems of this kind, which are of industrial importance.
Many novel cooperative phenomena found in a variety of systems studied by scientists can be treated using the uniting principles of synergetics. Examples are frustrated and random systems, polymers, spin glasses, neural networks, chemical and biological systems, and fluids. In this book attention is focused on two main problems. First, how local, topological constraints (frustrations) can cause macroscopic cooperative behavior: related ideas initially developed for spin glasses are shown to play key roles also for optimization and the modeling of neural networks. Second, the dynamical constraints that arise from the nonlinear dynamics of the systems: the discussion covers turbulence in fluids, pattern formation, and conventional 1/f noise. The volume will be of interest to anyone wishing to understand the current development of work on complex systems, which is presently one of the most challenging subjects in statistical and condensed matter physics.
WAVE TURBULENCE is a state of a system of many simultaneously excited and interacting waves characterized by an energy distribution which is not in any sense close to thermodynamic equilibrium. Such situations in a choppy sea, in a hot plasma, in dielectrics under arise, for example, a powerful laser beam, in magnets placed in a strong microwave field, etc. Among the great variety of physical situations in which wave turbulence arises, it is possible to select two large limiting groups which allow a detailed analysis. The first is fully developed wave turbulence arising when energy pumping and dissipation have essentially different space scales. In this case there is a wide power spectrum of turbulence. This type of turbulence is described in detail e. g. in Zakharov et al. 1 In the second limiting case the scales in which energy pumping and dissipation occur are the same. As a rule, in this case a narrow, almost singular spectrum of turbulence appears which is concentrated near surfaces, curves or even points in k-space. One of the most important, widely investigated and instructive examples of this kind of turbulence is parametric wave turbulence appearing as a result of the evolution of a parametric instability of waves in media under strong external periodic modulation (laser beam, microwave electromagnetic field, etc. ). The present book deals with parametric wave turbulence.
This book offers a discussion of Niels Bohr's conception of "complementarity," arguably his greatest contribution to physics and philosophy. By tracing Bohr's work from his 1913 atomic theory to the introduction and then refinement of the idea of complementarity, and by explicating different meanings of "complementarity" in Bohr and the relationships between it and Bohr's other concepts, the book aims to offer a contained and accessible, and yet sufficiently comprehensive account of Bohr's work on complementarity and its significance.
This book provides an introduction to Quantum Field Theory (QFT) at an elementary level-with only special relativity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics as prerequisites. For this fresh approach to teaching QFT, based on numerous lectures and courses given by the authors, a representative sample of topics has been selected containing some of the more innovative, challenging or subtle concepts. They are presented with a minimum of technical details, the discussion of the main ideas being more important than the presentation of the typically very technical mathematical details necessary to obtain the final results. Special attention is given to the realization of symmetries in particle physics: global and local symmetries, explicit, spontaneously broken, and anomalous continuous symmetries, as well as discrete symmetries. Beyond providing an overview of the standard model of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions and the current understanding of the origin of mass, the text enumerates the general features of renormalization theory as well as providing a cursory description of effective field theories and the problem of naturalness in physics. Among the more advanced topics the reader will find are an outline of the first principles derivation of the CPT theorem and the spin-statistics connection. As indicated by the title, the main aim of this text is to motivate the reader to study QFT by providing a self-contained and approachable introduction to the most exciting and challenging aspects of this successful theoretical framework."
Quantum trajectory theory is largely employed in theoretical quantum optics and quantum open system theory and is closely related to the conceptual formalism of quantum mechanics (quantum measurement theory). However, even research articles show that not all the features of the theory are well known or completely exploited. We wrote this monograph mainly for researchers in theoretical quantum optics and related ?elds with the aim of giving a self-contained and solid p- sentation of a part of quantum trajectory theory (the diffusive case) together with some signi?cant applications (mainly with purposes of illustration of the theory, but which in part have been recently developed). Another aim of the monograph is to introduce to this subject post-graduate or PhD students. To help them, in the most mathematical and conceptual chapters, summaries are given to ?x ideas. Moreover, as stochastic calculus is usually not in the background of the studies in physics, we added Appendix A to introduce these concepts. The book is written also for ma- ematicians with interests in quantum theories. Quantum trajectory theory is a piece of modern theoretical physics which needs an interplay of various mathematical subjects, such as functional analysis and probability theory (stochastic calculus), and offers to mathematicians a beautiful ?eld for applications, giving suggestions for new mathematical developments.
New ideas on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics, related to the theory of quantum measurement, as well as the emergence of quantum optics, quantum electronics and optical communications have shown that the statistical structure of quantum mechanics deserves special investigation. In the meantime it has become a mature subject. In this book, the author, himself a leading researcher in this field, surveys the basic principles and results of the theory, concentrating on mathematically precise formulations. Special attention is given to the measurement dynamics. The presentation is pragmatic, concentrating on the ideas and their motivation. For detailed proofs, the readers, researchers and graduate students, are referred to the extensively documented literature.
A material continuum moving axially at high speed can be met in numerous different technical applications. These comprise band saws, web papers during manufacturing, processing and printing processes, textile bands during manufacturing and processing, pipes transporting fluids, transmission belts as well as flat objects moving at high speeds in space. In all these so varied technical applications, the maximum transport speed or the transportation speed is aimed at in order to increase efficiency and optimize investment and performance costs of sometimes very expensive and complex machines and installations. The dynamic behavior of axially moving systems very often hinders from reaching these aims. The book is devoted to dynamics of axially moving material objects of low flexural stiffness that are referred to as webs. Webs are moving at high speed, for example, in paper production the paper webs are transported with longitudinal speeds of up to 3000 m/min. Above the critical speed one can expect various dynamical instabilities mainly of divergent and flutter type. The up-to-date state of investigations conducted in the field of the axially moving system dynamics is presented in the beginning of the book. Special attention is paid on nonlinear dynamic investigations of translating systems. In the next chapters various mathematical models that can be employed in dynamic investigations of such objects and the results of analysis of the dynamic behavior of the axially moving orthotropic material web are presented. To make tracing the dynamic considerations easier, a paper web is the main object of investigations in the book.
About half a century ago Landau formulated the central principles of the phe nomenological second-order phase transition theory which is based on the idea of spontaneous symmetry breaking at phase transition. By means of this ap proach it has been possible to treat phase transitions of different nature in altogether distinct systems from a unified viewpoint, to embrace the aforemen tioned transitions by a unified body of mathematics and to show that, in a certain sense, physical systems in the vicinity of second-order phase transitions exhibit universal behavior. For several decades the Landau method has been extensively used to an alyze specific phase transitions in systems and has been providing a basis for interpreting experimental data on the behavior of physical characteristics near the phase transition, including the behavior of these characteristics in systems subject to various external effects such as pressure, electric and magnetic fields, deformation, etc. The symmetry aspects of Landau's theory are perhaps most effective in analyzing phase transitions in crystals because the relevant body of mathemat ics for this symmetry, namely, the crystal space group representation, has been worked out in great detail. Since particular phase transitions in crystals often call for a subtle symmetry analysis, the Landau method has been continually refined and developed over the past ten or fifteen years."
In recent years, due primarily to the proliferation of computers, dynamical systems has again returned to its roots in applications. It is the aim of this book to provide undergraduate and beginning graduate students in mathematics or science and engineering with a modest foundation of knowledge. Equations in dimensions one and two constitute the majority of the text, and in particular it is demonstrated that the basic notion of stability and bifurcations of vector fields are easily explained for scalar autonomous equations. Further, the authors investigate the dynamics of planar autonomous equations where new dynamical behavior, such as periodic and homoclinic orbits appears.
Building on Wilson's renormalization group, the authors have developed a unified approach that not only reproduces known results but also yields new results. A systematic exposition of the contemporary theory of phase transitions, the book includes detailed discussions of phenomena in Heisenberg magnets, granular super-conducting alloys, anisotropic systems of dipoles, and liquid-vapor transitions. Suitable for advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students in physics, the text assumes some knowledge of statistical mechanics, but is otherwise self-contained.
Approach your problems from the It isn't that they can't see the solution. right end and begin with the answers. It is that they can't see the problem. Then one day, perhaps you will find the final question. G. K. Chesterton. The Scandal of Father Brown 'The point of a Pin'. 'The Hermit Clad in Crane Feathers' in R. van Gulik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the 'tree' of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non trivially) in regional and theoretical economics; algebraic geometry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical programming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to filtering; and prediction and electrical engineering can use Stein spaces. And in addition to this there are such new emerging subdisciplines as 'experimental mathematics', 'CFD', 'completely integrable systems', 'chaos, synergetics and large-scale order', which are almost impossible to fit into the existing classification schemes. They draw upon widely different sections of mathematics."
One service mathematics has rc: ndered the 'Et moi, "', si j'avait su comment CD revenir, je n'y serais point alle. ' human race. It has put common SCIIJC back Jules Verne where it belongs. on the topmost shelf next to tbe dusty canister 1abdled 'discarded non- The series is divergent; tberefore we may be sense'. able to do sometbing witb it Eric T. Bell O. Heaviside Mathematics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non linearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other parts and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics . . . '; 'One service logic has rendered com puter science . . . '; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics . . . '. All arguably true_ And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'etre of this series_ This series, Mathematics and Its ApplicatiOns, started in 1977. Now that over one hundred volumes have appeared it seems opportune to reexamine its scope_ At the time I wrote "Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the 'tree' of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches."
One of the ultimate goals of materials research is to develop a fun damental and predictive understanding of the physical and metallurgical properties of metals and alloys. Such an understanding can then be used in the design of materials having novel properties or combinations of proper ties designed to meet specific engineering applications. The development of new and useful alloy systems and the elucidation of their properties are the domain of metallurgy. Traditionally, the search for new alloy systems has been conducted largely on a trial and error basis, guided by the skill and intuition of the metallurgist, large volumes of experimental data, the principles of 19th century thermodynamics and ad hoc semi-phenomenological models. Recently, the situation has begun to change. For the first time, it is possible to understand the underlying mechanisms that control the formation of alloys and determine their properties. Today theory can begin to offer guidance in predicting the properties of alloys and in developing new alloy systems. Historically, attempts directed toward understanding phase stability and phase transitions have proceeded along distinct and seemingly diverse lines. Roughly, we can divide these approaches into the following broad categories. 1. Experimental determination of phase diagrams and related properties, 2. Thermodynamic/statistical mechanical approaches based on semi phenomenological models, and 3. Ab initio quantum mechanical methods. Metallurgists have traditionally concentrated their efforts in cate gories 1 and 2, while theoretical physicists have been preoccupied with 2 and 3."
We present here a selection of the seminars given at the Second International Workshop on Instabilities and Nonequilibrium Structures in Valparaiso, Chile, in December 1987. The Workshop was organized by Facultad de Ciencias Fisicas y Matematicas of Universidad de Chile and by Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria where it took place. This periodic meeting takes place every two years in Chile and aims to contribute to the efforts of Latin America towards the development of scientific research. This development is certainly a necessary condition for progress in our countries and we thank our lecturers for their warm collaboration to fulfill this need. We are also very much indebted to the Chilean Academy of Sciences for sponsoring officially this Workshop. We thank also our sponsors and supporters for their valuable help, and most especially the Scientific Cooperation Program of France, UNESCO, Ministerio de Educaci6n of Chile and Fundaci6n Andes. We are grateful to Professor Michiel Hazewinkel for including this book in his series and to Dr. David Larner of Kluwer for his continuous interest and support to this project.
This book contains the lectures and a selection of the seminars gi ven in the Fifth International Workshop on Instabilities and Nonequilibrium Structures which took place in Santiago, Chile, in December 1993. The Workshop was organized by Facultad de Ciencias Fisicas y Matematicas, Universidad de Chile, Instituto de Fisica of Universidad Cat6lica de Valparaiso and Centro de Fisica No Lineal y Sistemas Complejos de Santiago. This volume is the first of a new series of Kluwer on Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems which will be edited by the Centro de Fisica No Lineal y Sistemas Complejos de Santiago. We thank Dr. David Lamer of Kluwer for his encouragements and support for this project. ix LIST OF SPONSORS OF THE WORKSHOP * Academia Chilena de Ciencias * Facultad de Ciencias Fisicas y Mathematicas de la Univ. de Chile * Instituto de Fisica de la Univ. Cat6lica de Valparaiso * Centro de FIsica No Lineal y Sistemas Complejos de Santiago (CFNL) * CONICYT (Chile) * Ministere Francais des Affaires Etrangeres * International Centre for Theoretical Physics (Trieste) * UNESCO * Fundaci6n Andes (Chile) * Departamento Tecnico de Investigaci6n y de Relaciones Internationa- cion ales de la Universidad de Chile * IDIEM (Fac. Cs. FIs. y Mat., Univ. de Chile) * CHILGENER S.A.
The four-week period fran May 20 to June 16, 1984 was an intensive period of advanced study on the foundations and frontiers of nonequili brium statistical physics (NSP). During the first two weeks of this period, an advanced-study course on the "Foundations of NSP" was con ducted in Albuquerque under the sponsorship of the University of New Mexico Center for High-Technology Materials. This was followed by a two-week NATO Advanced Study Insti tute on the "Frontiers of NSP" in Santa Fe under the same directorship. Many Students attended both meetings. This book comprises proceedings based on those lectures and covering a broad spectrum of topics in NSP ranging fran basic problems in quantum measurement theory to analogies between lasers and Darwinian evolution. The various types of quantum distribution functions and their uses are treated by several authors. other tools of NSP, such as Langevin equations, Fokker-Planck equations, and master equations, are developed and applied to areas such as laser physics, plasma physics, Brownian motion, and hydrodynamic instabilities. The properties and experimental detection of squeezed states and antibunching are described, as well as experimental tests of the violation of Bell's inequality. Information theory, mean-field theory, reservoir theory, entropy maximization, and even a novel nonlinear generalization of quantum mechanics are used to discuss nonequilibrium phenanena and the approach toward thermodynamic equilibrium."
... "What do you call work?" "Why ain't that work?" Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly: "Well. lI1a), he it is, and maybe it aill't. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawvc/: " "Oil CO/lll , IIOW, Will do not mean to let 011 that you like it?" The brush continued to move. "Likc it? Well, I do not see wlzy I oughtn't to like it. Does a hoy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?" That put the thing ill a Ilew light. Ben stopped nibhling the apple .... (From Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapter II.) Mathematics can put quantitative phenomena in a new light; in turn applications may provide a vivid support for mathematical concepts. This volume illustrates some aspects of the mathematical treatment of phase transitions, namely, the classical Stefan problem and its generalizations. The in tended reader is a researcher in application-oriented mathematics. An effort has been made to make a part of the book accessible to beginners, as well as physicists and engineers with a mathematical background. Some room has also been devoted to illustrate analytical tools. This volume deals with research I initiated when I was affiliated with the Istituto di Analisi Numerica del C.N.R. in Pavia, and then continued at the Dipartimento di Matematica dell'Universita di Trento. It was typeset by the author in plain TEX."
New developments in laser technology and theoretical modeling has allowed physicists to control chemical reactions using lasers and to attain an understanding of the underlying photochemical reaction mechanism. The book gives an up-to-date presentation of this research area, covering time-resolved spectroscopy and the dynamical behavior of electronically excited states.
In recent years there has been a growth in interest in studying the heart from the perspective of the physical sciences: mechanics, fluid flow, electromechanics. This volume is the result of a workshop held in July 1989 at the Institute for Nonlinear Sciences at the University of California at San Diego that brought together scientists and clinicians with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who shared an interest in the heart. The chapters were prepared by the invited speakers as didactic reviews of their subjects but also include the structure, mechanical properties, and function of the heart and the myocardium, electrical activity of the heart and myocardium, and mathematical models of heart function. |
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