Studies of surfaces and interactions between dissimilar materials or phases are vital for modern technological applications. Computer simulation methods are indispensable in such studies and this book contains a substantial body of knowledge about simulation methods as well as the theoretical background for performing computer experiments and analyzing the data.

The book is self-contained, covering a range of topics from classical statistical mechanics to a variety of simulation techniques, including molecular dynamics, Langevin dynamics and Monte Carlo methods. A number of physical systems are considered, including fluids, magnets, polymers, granular media, and driven diffusive systems. The computer simulation methods considered include both standard and accelerated versions. The simulation methods are clearly related to the fundamental principles of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.

The need for tsunami research and analysis has grown dramatically following the devastating tsunami of December 2004, which affected Southern Asia. This book pursues a detailed theoretical and mathematical analysis of the fundamentals of tsunamis, especially the evolution and dynamics of tsunamis and other great waves. Of course, it includes specific measurement results from the 2004 tsunami, but the emphasis is on the nature of the waves themselves and their links to nonlinear phenomena.

Statistical mechanics deals with systems in which chaos and randomness reign supreme. The current theory is therefore firmly based on the equations of classical mechanics and the postulates of probability theory. This volume seeks to present a unified account of classical mechanical statistics, rather than a collection of unconnected reviews on recent results. To help achieve this, one element is emphasised which integrates various parts of the prevailing theory into a coherent whole. This is the hierarchy of the BBGKY equations, which enables a relationship to be established between the Gibbs theory, the liquid theory, and the theory of nonequilibrium phenomena. As the main focus is on the complex theoretical subject matter, attention to applications is kept to a minimum. The book is divided into three parts. The first part describes the fundamentals of the theory, embracing chaos in dynamic systems and distribution functions of dynamic systems. Thermodynamic equilibrium, dealing with Gibbs statistical mechanics and the statistical mechanics of liquids, forms the second part. Lastly, the third part concentrates on kinetics, and the theory of nonequilibrium gases and liquids in particular. Audience: This book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers whose work involves thermophysics, theory of surface phenomena, theory of chemical reactions, physical chemistry and biophysics.

Our world is composed of systems within systems-the machines we build, the information we share, the organizations we form, and elements of nature that surround us. Therefore, nearly every field of study and practice embodies behaviors stemming from system dynamics. Yet the study of systems has remained somewhat fragmented based on philosophies, methodologies, and intentions. Many methodologies for analyzing complex systems extend far beyond the traditional framework of deduction evaluation and may, thus, appear mysterious to the uninitiated. This book seeks to dispel the mysteries of systems analysis by holistically explaining the philosophies, methodologies, and intentions in the context of understanding how all types of systems in our world form and how these systems break. This presentation is made at the level of conceptual understanding, with plenty of figures but no mathematical formulas, for the beginning student and interested readers new to studying systems. Through the conceptual understanding provided, students are given a powerful capability to see the hidden behaviors and unexplained consequences in the world around us.

The papers collected in this volume address all aspects related to thermofluidynamic processses in Diesel engines, from basic studies aiming to obtain a better understanding of the physical processes underlying diesel engine operation, to the real day-to-day problems associated with engine development. The topics covered comprise: Air management, injection systems, spray development and air interaction, combustion and pollutant formation, emission control strategies, and new concepts.

Using examples from finance and modern warfare to the flocking of birds and the swarming of bacteria, the collected research in this volume demonstrates the common methodological approaches and tools for modeling and simulating collective behavior.

Thetopics presented point toward new and challenging frontiers of applied mathematics, making the volume a useful referencetext forapplied mathematicians, physicists, biologists, and economists involved in the modeling of socio-economic systems."

This book presents a novel account of the human temporal dimension called the "human temporality" and develops a special mathematical formalism for describing such an object as the human mind. One of the characteristic features of the human mind is its temporal extent. For objects of physical reality, only the present exists, which may be conceived as a point-like moment in time. In the human temporality, the past retained in the memory, the imaginary future, and the present coexist and are closely intertwined and impact one another. This book focuses on one of the fragments of the human temporality called the complex present. A detailed analysis of the classical and modern concepts has enabled the authors to put forward the idea of the multi-component structure of the present. For the concept of the complex present, the authors proposed a novel account that involves a qualitative description and a special mathematical formalism. This formalism takes into account human goal-oriented behavior and uncertainty in human perception. The present book can be interesting for theoreticians, physicists dealing with modeling systems where the human factor plays a crucial role, philosophers who are interested in applying philosophical concepts to constructing mathematical models, and psychologists whose research is related to modeling mental processes.

This book aims to present an information-theoretical approach to thermodynamics and its generalisations. On the one hand, it generalises the concept of information thermodynamics' to that of information dynamics' in order to stress applications outside thermal phenomena. On the other hand, it is a synthesis of the dynamics of state change and the theory of complexity, which provide a common framework to treat both physical and nonphysical systems together. Both classical and quantum systems are discussed, and two appendices are included to explain principal definitions and some important aspects of the theory of Hilbert spaces and operator algebras. The concept of higher-order temperatures is explained and applied to biological and linguistic systems. The theory of open systems is presented in a new, much more general form. Audience: This volume is intended mainly for theoretical and mathematical physicists, but also for mathematicians, experimental physicists, physical chemists, theoretical biologists, communication engineers, and all those interested in entropy and open systems. It can also be recommended as a supplementary text.

Thermal processes are ubiquitous and an understanding of thermal phenomena is essential for a complete description of the physics of nanoparticles, both for the purpose of modeling the dynamics of the particles and for the correct interpretation of experimental data.
This book has the twofold aim to present coherently the relevant results coming from the recent scientific literature and to guide the readers through the process of deriving results, enabling them to explore the limits of the mathematical approximations and test the power of the method. The book is focused on the fundamental properties of nanosystems in the gas phase. For this reason there is a strong emphasis on microcanonical physics. Each chapter is enrichedwith exercises and 3 Appendices provide additional useful materials."

This book is the Proceedings of the First International Symposium for Science on Form. The Symposium was held on November 26 through 30, 1985 at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. It was organized by The Society for Science on Form, J::.!pan, and sponsored by the Foundation for Advancement of International Science (F AIS). The purpose of the Symposium was to discuss interdisciplinal science aspects of form. "Form", to exhibit its tremendous characters, depends on the material and the changes. But, it is the form that appears evident at once and endures. Form is absorbed from every field as media of information. Thirty years and more ago, interdisciplinal problems between earthethics and science were submitted to a symposium on Form in Nature and Art. The relation between form and function had been emphasized philosophically and psychologically. In this quarter century, information theory had exactly decided figures, electronic computer had easily calculated graphics, and laser hologram had completely contained the objective image and reconstructed it.

100 years after the first observation of ripening by Ostwald and 40 years after the first publication of a theory describing this process, this monograph presents, in a self-consistent and comprehensive manner, all the bits and pieces of coarsening theories so that the main issues and the underlying mathematics of self-similar coarsening of dispersed systems can be understood. It contains all of the background material necessary to understand growth and coarsening of spherical particles or droplets in a liquid or solid matrix. Some basic knowledge of heat and mass transfer, thermodynamics and differential equations would be helpful, but not necessary, as all the concepts required are introduced. The text is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as for researchers. Rather than giving a complete survey of the field, it presents a careful derivation of the existing results and places them into some perspective.

This book contains the courses given at the Fourth School on Statistical Physics and Cooperative Systems held at Santiago, Chile, from 12th to 16th December 1994. This School brings together scientists working on subjects related to recent trends in complex systems. Some of these subjects deal with dynamical systems, ergodic theory, cellular automata, symbolic and arithmetic dynamics, spatial systems, large deviation theory and neural networks. Scientists working in these subjects come from several aeras: pure and applied mathematics, non linear physics, biology, computer science, electrical engineering and artificial intelligence. Each contribution is devoted to one or more of the previous subjects. In most cases they are structured as surveys, presenting at the same time an original point of view about the topic and showing mostly new results. The expository text of Roberto Livi concerns the study of coupled map lattices (CML) as models of spatially extended dynamical systems. CML is one of the most used tools for the investigation of spatially extended systems. The paper emphasizes rigorous results about the dynamical behavior of one dimensional CML; i.e. a uniform real local function defined in the interval [0,1], interacting with its nearest neighbors in a one dimensional lattice.

This thesis introduces readers to the Standard Model, the top quark and its properties, before explaining the concept of spin correlation measurement. The first measurement of top quark spin correlations at the LHC in the lepton+jets decay channel is presented. As the heaviest elementary particle, the top quark plays an essential role in the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. In the case of top quarks being produced in pairs at hadron colliders, the Standard Model predicts their spins to be correlated. The degree of correlation depends on both the production mechanism and properties of the top quark. Any deviation from the Standard Model prediction can be an indicator for new physics phenomena. The thesis employs an advanced top quark reconstruction algorithm including dedicated identification of the up- and down-type quarks from the W boson decay.

In a certain sense this book has been twenty-five years in the writing, since I first struggled with the foundations of the subject as a graduate student. It has taken that long to develop a deep appreciation of what Gibbs was attempting to convey to us near the end of his life and to understand fully the same ideas as resurrected by E.T. Jaynes much later. Many classes of students were destined to help me sharpen these thoughts before I finally felt confident that, for me at least, the foundations of the subject had been clarified sufficiently. More than anything, this work strives to address the following questions: What is statistical mechanics? Why is this approach so extraordinarily effective in describing bulk matter in terms of its constituents? The response given here is in the form of a very definite point of view-the principle of maximum entropy (PME). There have been earlier attempts to approach the subject in this way, to be sure, reflected in the books by Tribus [Thermostat ics and Thermodynamics, Van Nostrand, 1961], Baierlein [Atoms and Information Theory, Freeman, 1971], and Hobson [Concepts in Statistical Mechanics, Gordon and Breach, 1971].

Physicists, when modelling physical systems with a large number of degrees of freedom, and statisticians, when performing data analysis, have developed their own concepts and methods for making the best' inference. But are these methods equivalent, or not? What is the state of the art in making inferences? The physicists want answers. More: neural computation demands a clearer understanding of how neural systems make inferences; the theory of chaotic nonlinear systems as applied to time series analysis could profit from the experience already booked by the statisticians; and finally, there is a long-standing conjecture that some of the puzzles of quantum mechanics are due to our incomplete understanding of how we make inferences. Matter enough to stimulate the writing of such a book as the present one. But other considerations also arise, such as the maximum entropy method and Bayesian inference, information theory and the minimum description length. Finally, it is pointed out that an understanding of human inference may require input from psychologists. This lively debate, which is of acute current interest, is well summarized in the present work.

These proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Difference Equations and Applications cover a number of different aspects of difference equations and discrete dynamical systems, as well as the interplay between difference equations and dynamical systems. The conference was organized by the Department of Mathematics at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) under the auspices of the International Society of Difference Equations (ISDE) and held in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain) in July 2012. Its purpose was to bring together experts and novices in these fields to discuss the latest developments. The book gathers contributions in the field of combinatorial and topological dynamics, complex dynamics, applications of difference equations to biology, chaotic linear dynamics, economic dynamics and control and asymptotic behavior, and periodicity of difference equations. As such it is of interest to researchers and scientists engaged in the theory and applications of difference equations and discrete dynamical systems.

This book is an introduction to the dynamics of reaction-diffusion systems, with a focus on fronts and stationary spatial patterns. Emphasis is on systems that are non-standard in the sense that either the transport is not simply classical diffusion (Brownian motion) or the system is not homogeneous. A important feature is the derivation of the basic phenomenological equations from the mesoscopic system properties. Topics addressed include transport with inertia, described by persistent random walks and hyperbolic reaction-transport equations and transport by anomalous diffusion, in particular subdiffusion, where the mean square displacement grows sublinearly with time. In particular reaction-diffusion systems are studied where the medium is in turn either spatially inhomogeneous, compositionally heterogeneous or spatially discrete. Applications span a vast range of interdisciplinary fields and the systems considered can be as different as human or animal groups migrating under external influences, population ecology and evolution, complex chemical reactions, or networks of biological cells. Several chapters treat these applications in detail.

This book focuses on the assembly, organization and resultant collective dynamics of soft matter systems maintained away from equilibrium by an energy flux. Living matter is the ultimate example of such systems, which are comprised of different constituents on very different scales (ions, nucleic acids, proteins, cells). The result of their diverse interactions, maintained using the energy from physiological processes, is a fantastically well-organized and dynamic whole. This work describes results from minimal, biomimetic systems and primarily investigates membranes and active emulsions, as well as key aspects of both soft matter and non-equilibrium phenomena. It is shown that these minimal reconstitutions are already capable of a range of complex behaviour such as nonlinear electric responses, chemical communication and locomotion. These studies will bring us closer to a fundamental understanding of complex systems by reconstituting key aspects of their form and function in simple model systems. Further, they may also serve as the first technological steps towards artificial soft functional matter.

This topical volume reviews applications of continuum mechanics to systems in geophysics and the environment. Part of the text is devoted to numerical simulations and modeling. The topics covered include soil mechanics and porous media, glacier and ice dynamics, climatology and lake physics, climate change as well as numerical algorithms. The book, written by well-known experts, addresses researchers and students interested in physical aspects of our environment.

This book features research presented and discussed during the Research and Innovation Forum (Rii Forum) 2021. The Covid-19 pandemic and its social, political, and economic implications had confirmed that a more thorough debate on these issues and topics was needed. For this reason, the Rii Forum 2021 was devoted to the broadly defined question of the short- and long-term impact of the pandemic on our societies. This volume serves as an essential resource to understand the diverse ways in which Covid-19 impacted our societies, including the capacity to innovate, advances in technology, the evolution of the healthcare systems, business model innovation, the prospects of growth, the stability of political systems, and the future of education.

I am very pleased and privileged to write a short foreword for the monograph of Dean Driebe: Fully Chaotic Maps and Broken Time Symmetry. Despite the technical title this book deals with a problem of fundamental importance. To appreciate its meaning we have to go back to the tragic struggle that was initiated by the work of the great theoretical physicist Ludwig Boltzmann in the second half of the 19th century. Ludwig Boltzmann tried to emulate in physics what Charles Darwin had done in biology and to formulate an evolutionary approach in which past and future would play different roles. Boltzmann's work has lead to innumerable controversies as the laws of classical mechanics (as well as the laws of quan tum mechanics) as traditionally formulated imply symmetry between past and future. As is well known, Albert Einstein often stated that "Time is an illusion." Indeed, as long as dynamics is associated with trajectories satisfy ing the equations of classical mechanics, explaining irreversibility in terms of trajectories appears, as Henri Poincare concluded, as a logical error. After a long struggle, Boltzmann acknowledged his defeat and introduced a probabil ity description in which all microscopic states are supposed to have the same a priori probability. Irreversibility would then be due to the imperfection of our observations associated only with the "macroscopic" state described by temperature, pressure and other similar parameters. Irreversibility then appears devoid of any fundamental significance. However today this position has become untenable."

This is the first comprehensive presentation of the quantum non-linear sigma-models. The original papers consider in detail geometrical properties and renormalization of a generic non-linear sigma-model, illustrated by explicit multi-loop calculations in perturbation theory.

This thesis analyses how supersymmetric (SUSY) extensions of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics can be constrained using information from Higgs physics, electroweak precision observables and direct searches for new particles. Direct searches for SUSY particles at the LHC have not resulted in any signal so far, and limits on the SUSY parameter space have been set. Measurements of the properties of the observed Higgs boson at 125 GeV as well as of the W boson mass can provide valuable indirect constraints, supplementing the ones from direct searches. Precise calculations are performed for Higgs decays and electroweak precision observables within the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model and the next to-minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model. Furthermore, a method is presented to reinterpret the LHC limits from direct SUSY searches in more realistic SUSY scenarios. The phenomenological consequences of those results are thoroughly analysed.

This book contains the courses given at the Third School on Statistical Physics and Cooperative Systems held at Santiago, Chile, from 14th to 18th December 1992. The main idea of this periodic school was to bring together scientists work with recent trends in Statistical Physics. More precisely ing on subjects related related with non linear phenomena, dynamical systems, ergodic theory, cellular au tomata, symbolic dynamics, large deviation theory and neural networks. Scientists working in these subjects come from several areas: mathematics, biology, physics, computer science, electrical engineering and artificial intelligence. Recently, a very important cross-fertilization has taken place with regard to the aforesaid scientific and technological disciplines, so as to give a new approach to the research whose common core remains in statistical physics. Each contribution is devoted to one or more of the previous subjects. In most cases they are structured as surveys, presenting at the same time an original point of view about the topic and showing mostly new results. The expository text of Fran"

Most interesting and difficult problems in equilibrium statistical mechanics concern models which exhibit phase transitions. For graduate students and more experienced researchers this book provides an invaluable reference source of approximate and exact solutions for a comprehensive range of such models. Part I contains background material on classical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, together with a classification and survey of lattice models. The geometry of phase transitions is described and scaling theory is used to introduce critical exponents and scaling laws. An introduction is given to finite-size scaling, conformal invariance and Schramm-Loewner evolution. Part II contains accounts of classical mean-field methods. The parallels between Landau expansions and catastrophe theory are discussed and Ginzburg--Landau theory is introduced. The extension of mean-field theory to higher-orders is explored using the Kikuchi--Hijmans--De Boer hierarchy of approximations. In Part III the use of algebraic, transformation and decoration methods to obtain exact system information is considered. This is followed by an account of the use of transfer matrices for the location of incipient phase transitions in one-dimensionally infinite models and for exact solutions for two-dimensionally infinite systems. The latter is applied to a general analysis of eight-vertex models yielding as special cases the two-dimensional Ising model and the six-vertex model. The treatment of exact results ends with a discussion of dimer models. In Part IV series methods and real-space renormalization group transformations are discussed. The use of the De Neef-Enting finite-lattice method is described in detail and applied to the derivation of series for a number of model systems, in particular for the Potts model. The use of Pad\'e, differential and algebraic approximants to locate and analyze second- and first-order transitions is described. The realization of the ideas of scaling theory by the renormalization group is presented together with treatments of various approximation schemes including phenomenological renormalization. Part V of the book contains a collection of mathematical appendices intended to minimise the need to refer to other mathematical sources.