This book treats a wide variety of topics systematically by constructing time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau models for various systems in physics, metallurgy, and polymer science. Beginning with a summary of advanced statistical-mechanical theories including the renormalization group theory, the book reviews dynamical theories, and covers the kinetics of phase ordering, spinodal decomposition, and nucleation in depth. The phase transition dynamics of real systems are discussed, treating interdisciplinary problems in a unified manner. New topics include supercritical fluid dynamics, stress-diffusion coupling in polymers, and mesoscopic dynamics at structural phase transitions in solids.

The fourth Nishinomiya-Yukawa Memorial Symposium, devoted to the topic of dynamics and patterns in complex fluids, was held on October 26 and 27, 1989, in Nishinomiya City, Japan, where ten invited speakers gave their lectures. A one-day meeting, comprising short talks and poster sessions, was then held on the same topic on October 28 at the Research Institute for Fundamental Physics, Kyoto University. The present volume contains the 10 invited papers and 38 contributed papers presented at these two meetings. The symposium was sponsored by Nishinomiya City, where Prof. Hideki Yukawa once lived and where he wrote the celebrated paper describing the work that was later honored by a Nobel prize. The topic of the fourth symposium was chosen from one of the most vigorously evolving and highly interdisciplinary fields in condensed matter physics. The field of complex fluids is very diverse and still in its infancy and, as a result, the definition of a complex fluid varies greatly from one researcher to the next. One of the objectives of the symposium was to clarify its definition by explicitly posing a number of potentially rich problems waiting to be explored. Indeed, experimentalists are disclosing a variety of intriguing dynamical phenomena in complex systems such as polymers, liquid crystals, gels, colloids, and surfactant systems. We, the organizers, hope that the symposium will contribute to the increasing importance of the field in the coming years.

Phase transition dynamics is centrally important to condensed matter physics. This 2002 book treats a wide variety of topics systematically by constructing time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau models for various systems in physics, metallurgy and polymer science. Beginning with a summary of advanced statistical-mechanical theories including the renormalization group theory, the book reviews dynamical theories, and covers the kinetics of phase ordering, spinodal decomposition and nucleation in depth. The phase transition dynamics of real systems are discussed, treating interdisciplinary problems in a unified manner. Topics include supercritical fluid dynamics, stress-diffusion coupling in polymers and mesoscopic dynamics at structural phase transitions in solids. Theoretical and experimental approaches to shear flow problems in fluids are reviewed. Phase Transition Dynamics provides a comprehensive account, building on the statistical mechanics of phase transitions covered in many introductory textbooks. It will be essential reading for researchers and advanced graduate students in physics, chemistry, metallurgy and polymer science.