The contributions in this book give a high-level coverage of many of the subjects and techniques needed to understand the physics of low-dimensional condensed matter systems. The topics presented include the use of conformal field theories, the Luttinger liquid approach to one-dimensional electron systems, and the use of random matrices in problems connected with quantum chaos. The contributions are authored by some of the most prominent physicists active in the field, among them the 1998 Nobel Prize laureate R. B. Laughlin. The book should become an extremely useful instrument for all those interested in theoretical condensed matter physics.

This book is especially addressed to young researchers in theoretical physics with a basic background in Field Theory and Condensed Matter Physics. The topics were chosen so as to offer the largest possible overlap between the two expertises, selecting a few key problems in Condensed Matter Theory which have been recently revisited within a field-theoretic approach. The presentation of the material is aimed not only at providing the reader with an overview of this exciting frontier area of modern theoretical physics, but also at elucidating most of the tools needed for a technical comprehen sion of the many papers appearing in current issues of physics journals and, hopefully, to enable the reader to tackle research problems in this area of physics. This makes the material a live creature: while not pretending it to be exhaustive, it is tutorial enough to be useful to young researchers as a starting point in anyone of the topics covered in the book."