The book aims to give an overview of the previous Sitges Conferences, which have been held during the last 25 years, with special emphasis on topics related to non-equilibrium phenomena. It includes review articles and articles dealing with new trends in the subject, written by scientists who have played an important role in the development of this area. The book is intended as a commemorative edition of the Sitges Conferences. Graduate students of physics and researchers will find this a stimulating account of the development of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics in the last years, covering a wide scope of topics: kinetic theory, hydrodynamics, fluctuation phenomena and stochastic processes, relaxation phenomena, kinetics of phase transitions, growth kinetics, and so on.

Starting from basic principles, the book covers a wide variety of topics, ranging from Heisenberg, Schroedinger, second quantization, density matrix and path integral formulations of quantum mechanics, to applications that are (or will be) corner stones of present and future technologies. The emphasis is on spin waves, quantum information, recent tests of quantum physics and decoherence. The book provides a large amount of information without unbalancing the flow of the main ideas by laborious detail.

P. Levy's work on random walks with infinite moments, developed more than half a century ago, has now been fully appreciated as a foundation of probabilistic aspects of fractals and chaos as well as scale-invariant processes. This is the first book for physicists devoted to Levy processes. It includes thorough review articles on applications in fluid and gas dynamics, in dynamical systems including anomalous diffusion and in statistical mechanics. Various articles approach mathematical problems and finally the volume addresses problems in theoretical biology. The book is introduced by a personal recollection of P. Levy written by B. Mandelbrot."

Written in a pedagogical way, the articles in this book address graduate students as well as researchers and are well suited for seminar work. Subjects at the forefront of nuclear research, bordering other areas of many-particle physics, such as electron scattering at different energy scales, new physics with radioactive beams, multifragmentation, relativistic nuclear physics, high spin nuclear problems, chaos, the role of the continuum in nuclear physics or recent calculations with the shell model are presented. It is felt that the topics treated in this book address the main future lines of development of nuclear physics.

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With progress in technology, the problem of protecting human-beings, ma chines and technological processes from >Ources of vibration and impact has become of utmost importance. Traditional "classical" methods of pro tection, based upon utilising elastic passive and dissipative elements, turn out to be inefficient in many situations and can not completely satisfy the complex and often contradictory claims imposed on modern vibration protection systems which must provide high performance at minimum di mensions. For these reasons, active vibration protection systems, which are actually systems of automatic control with independent power sources, are widely used nowadays. Appearing and developing active systems require that traditional ap proaches to the analysis and synthesis of vibration protection systems must be revised. Firstly, there exists the necessity to re-state the problem of vi bration protection from mechanical actions as an equivalent problem in closed-loop control systems design, which is to be solved by the methods of control theory. Furthermore, it turns out that certain inherent proper ties of active systems must be taken into account for a proper design. In the majority of cases, the dynamic models of the objects to be protected and the bases to which these objects are to be attached must be revised. They are no longer considered as rigid bodies but elastic bodies with weak dissipation."

The book guides the reader from the foundations of statisti- cal thermodynamics including the theory of intermolecular forces to modern computer-aided applications in chemical en- gineering and physical chemistry. The approach is new. The foundations of quantum and statistical mechanics are presen- ted in a simple way and their applications to the prediction of fluid phase behavior of real systems are demonstrated. A particular effort is made to introduce the reader to expli- cit formulations of intermolecular interaction models and to show how these models influence the properties of fluid sy- stems. The established methods of statistical mechanics - computer simulation, perturbation theory, and numerical in- tegration - are discussed in a style appropriate for newcom- ers and are extensively applied. Numerous worked examples illustrate how practical calculations should be carried out.

In agent-based modeling the focus is very much on agent-based simulation, as simulation is a very important tool for agent-based modeling. We also use agent-based simulation in this book with a stress on the mathematical foundation of agent-based modeling. We introduce two original mathematical frameworks, a theory of SLD (Social Learning Dynamics) and an axiomatic theory of economic exchange (Exchange Algebra) among agents. Exchange algebra gives bottom-up reconstruction of SNA (System of National Accountings). SLD provides the concept of indirect control of socio-economic systems to manage structural change and its stability. We also compare agent-based simulation with gaming simulation and investigate the epistemological foundation of agent-based modeling.

Dissipative Quantum Chaos and Decoherence provides an overview of the state of the art of research in this exciting field. The main emphasis is on the development of a semiclassical formalism that allows one to incorporate the effect of dissipation and decoherence in a precise, yet tractable way into the quantum mechanics of classically chaotic systems. The formalism is employed to reveal how the spectrum of the quantum mechanical propagator of a density matrix is determined by the spectrum of the corresponding classical propagator of phase space density. Simple quantum--classical hybrid formulae for experimentally relevant correlation functions and time-dependent expectation values of observables are derived. The problem of decoherence is treated in detail, and highly unexpected cases of very slow decoherence are revealed, with important consequences for the long-debated realizability of Schrodinger cat states as well as for the construction of quantum computers."

Nonlinear complex open systems show great diversity in the process of self-organization, and that diversity increases as complexity increases. The measurement of complexity and the origins of the diversity of such complex systems are the focus of interdisciplinary studies extending across a wide range of scientific disciplines that include applied mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, ecology, sociology, and economics. Previous investigations have concentrated either on complexity or on diversity, but not both. This volume makes clear the relation between complexity and diversity with examples drawn from various disciplines. Compiles here are presentations from the Complexity and Diversity workshop held in Fugue, Japan, in August 1996. The contributions are the results of research in mathematical systems, physical systems, living systems, and social systems, and are contained in the four corresponding sections of the book. Mathematical expressions for the theory of complexity as a fundamental method along with realistic examples for application of systematic methods provide the reader with ready access to the latest topics in complex systems.

"The importance of knowledge consists not only in its direct practical utility but also in the fact the it promotes a widely contemplative habit of mind; on this ground, utility is to be found in much of the knowledge that is nowadays labelled 'useless'. " Bertrand Russel, In Praise of Idleness, London (1935) "Why are scientists in so many cases so deeply interested in their work ? Is it merely because it is useful ? It is only necessary to talk to such scientists to discover that the utilitarian possibilities of their work are generally of secondary interest to them. Something else is primary. " David Bohm, On creativity, Abingdon (1996) In this volume, the dynamical critical behaviour of many-body systems far from equilibrium is discussed. Therefore, the intrinsic properties of the - namics itself, rather than those of the stationary state, are in the focus of 1 interest. Characteristically, far-from-equilibrium systems often display - namical scaling, even if the stationary state is very far from being critical. A 1 As an example of a non-equilibrium phase transition, with striking practical c- sequences, consider the allotropic change of metallic ?-tin to brittle ?-tin. At o equilibrium, the gray ?-Sn becomes more stable than the silvery ?-Sn at 13. 2 C. Kinetically, the transition between these two solid forms of tin is rather slow at higher temperatures. It starts from small islands of ?-Sn, the growth of which proceeds through an auto-catalytic reaction.

This study shows that the Caspian Sea level time series possess long range dependence even after removing linear trends, based on analyses of the Hurst statistic, the sample autocorrelation functions, and the periodogram of the series. Forecasting performance of ARMA, ARIMA, ARFIMA and Trend Line-ARFIMA (TL-ARFIMA) combination models are investigated. The forecast confidence bands and the forecast updating methodology, provided for ARIMA models in the literature, are modified for the ARFIMA models. Sample autocorrelation functions are utilized to estimate the differencing lengths of the ARFIMA models. The confidence bands of the forecasts are estimated using the probability densities of the residuals without assuming a known distribution. There are no long-term sea level records for the region of Peninsular Malaysia and Malaysia's Sabah-Sarawak northern region of Borneo Island. In such cases the Global Climate Model (GCM) projections for the 21st century can be downscaled to the Malaysia region by means of regression techniques, utilizing the short records of satellite altimeters in this region against the GCM projections during a mutual observation period. This book will be useful for engineers and researchers working in the areas of applied statistics, climate change, sea level change, time series analysis, applied earth sciences, and nonlinear dynamics.

This new edition strives yet again to provide readers with a working knowledge of chaos theory and dynamical systems. It does so through parallel introductory explanations in the book and interaction with carefully-selected programs supplied on the accompanying disk. The programs enable readers, especially advanced-undergraduate students in physics, engineering, and math, to tackle relevant physical systems quickly on their PCs, without distraction from algorithmic details. For the third edition of Chaos: A Program Collection for the PC, each of the previous twelve programs is polished and rewritten in C++ (both Windows and Linux versions are included). A new program treats kicked systems, an important class of two-dimensional problems.

This is a review written by leading specialists on the state of the art of computational methods in lattice field theory. They cover a wide range: computer-assisted proofs, algorithms for computer simulation of field theories, effective field theories, computer studies of finite size effects, simulation with fast algorithms, and computer applicationsin experimental particle physics. The book addresses researchers, engineers, and graduate students in particle physics.

The fractal concept has become an important tool for understanding irregular complex systems in various scientific disciplines. This book discusses in great detail fractals in biology, heterogeneous chemistry, polymers, and the earth sciences. Beginning with a general introduction to fractal geometry it continues with eight chapters on self-organized criticality, rough surfaces and interfaces, random walks, chemical reactions, and fractals in chemistry, biology, and medicine. A special chapter entitled "Computer Exploration of Fractals, Chaos, and Cooperativity" presents computer demonstrations of fractal models.

This volume is devoted to the Persistent Scatterer Technique, the latest development in radar interferometric data processing. It is the only book on Permanent Scatterer (PS) technique of radar interferometry, and it details a newly developed stochastic model and estimator algorithm to cope with possible problems for the application of the PS technique. The STUN (spatio-temporal unwrapping network) algorithm, developed to cope with these issues in a robust way, is presented and applied to two test sites.

This book provides an in-depth study of the foundations of statistical energy analysis, with a focus on examining the statistical theory of sound and vibration. In the modal approach, an introduction to random vibration with application to complex systems having a large number of modes is provided. For the wave approach, the phenomena of propagation, group speed, and energy transport are extensively discussed. Particular emphasis is given to the emergence of the diffuse field, the central concept of the theory. All important notions are gradually introduced--making the text self-contained--to lead the reader to the ultimate result of `coupling power proportionality' and the concept of `vibrational temperature'. Further key topics include the analogy between thermodynamics and sound vibration. Applications are concerned with random vibration in mass-spring resonators, strings, beams, rods, and plates but also reverberation in room acoustics, radiation of sound, and sound response.

The articles in this book reflect the omnipresence of diffusion processes in the natural sciences. They describe experimental results as well as theoretical models and computer simulations, and address a wide readership including graduate students. The problems treated stem from physics, astronomy, physical chemistry, biology, and medicine. The papers are presented in a tutorial style and reflect the present-day trends in the field.

This tenth volume in the Poincare Seminar Series describes recent developments at one of the most challenging frontiers in statistical physics - the deeply related fields of glassy dynamics, especially near the glass transition, and of the statics and dynamics of granular systems. These fields are marked by a vigorous interchange between experiment, theory, and numerical studies, all of which are well represented by the leading experts who have contributed articles to this volume. These articles are also highly pedagogical, as befits their origin in lectures to a broad scientific audience. Highlights include a Galilean dialogue on the mean field and competing theories of the glass transition, a wide-ranging survey of colloidal glasses, and experimental as well as theoretical treatments of the relatively new field of dense granular flows. This book should be of broad general interest to both physicists and mathematicians.

Non-linear stochastic systems are at the center of many engineering disciplines and progress in theoretical research had led to a better understanding of non-linear phenomena. This book provides information on new fundamental results and their applications which are beginning to appear across the entire spectrum of mechanics. The outstanding points of these proceedings are Coherent compendium of the current state of modelling and analysis of non-linear stochastic systems from engineering, applied mathematics and physics point of view. Subject areas include: Multiscale phenomena, stability and bifurcations, control and estimation, computational methods and modelling. For the Engineering and Physics communities, this book will provide first-hand information on recent mathematical developments. The applied mathematics community will benefit from the modelling and information on various possible applications.

This is a collection of reasonably self-contained review articles on various features of wetting phenomena from both experimental and theoretical points of view. The experimental papers are concerned with wetting at nanoscopic scales, magnetic wetting transitions, convection at interfaces, and adsorption on a surface. The theoretical part is constituted by recent exact results at d=3, some reviews on wetting and disorder, a mathematical description of wetting, front propagation, random surfaces, and wetting within Potts models. The book addresses researchers, engineers, and graduate students in chemistry, physics, and applied mathematics.

Over the last two decades there has been a great deal of research into nonlinear dynamic models in economics, finance and the social sciences. This book contains twenty papers that range over very recent applications in these areas. Topics covered include structural change and economic growth, disequilibrium dynamics and economic policy as well as models with boundedly rational agents. The book illustrates some of the most recent research tools in this area and will be of interest to economists working in economic dynamics and to mathematicians interested in seeing ideas from nonlinear dynamics and complexity theory applied to the economic sciences.