This is the third Selecta of publications of Elliott Lieb, the first two being Stabil ity of Matter: From Atoms to Stars, edited by Walter Thirring, and Inequalities, edited by Michael Loss and Mary Beth Ruskai. A companion fourth Selecta on Statistical Mechanics is also edited by us. Elliott Lieb has been a pioneer of the discipline of mathematical physics as it is nowadays understood and continues to lead several of its most active directions today. For the first part of this selecta we have made a selection of Lieb's works on Condensed Matter Physics. The impact of Lieb's work in mathematical con densed matter physics is unrivaled. It is fair to say that if one were to name a founding father of the field, Elliott Lieb would be the only candidate to claim this singular position. While in related fields, such as Statistical Mechanics and Atomic Physics, many key problems are readily formulated in unambiguous mathematical form, this is less so in Condensed Matter Physics, where some say that rigor is "probably impossible and certainly unnecessary." By carefully select ing the most important questions and formulating them as well-defined mathemat ical problems, and then solving a good number of them, Lieb has demonstrated the quoted opinion to be erroneous on both counts. What is true, however, is that many of these problems turn out to be very hard. It is not unusual that they take a decade (even several decades) to solve."

In Statistical Physics one of the ambitious goals is to derive rigorously, from statistical mechanics, the thermodynamic properties of models with realistic forces. Elliott Lieb is a mathematical physicist who meets the challenge of statistical mechanics head on, taking nothing for granted and not being content until the purported consequences have been shown, by rigorous analysis, to follow from the premises. The present volume contains a selection of his contributions to the field, in particular papers dealing with general properties of Coulomb systems, phase transitions in systems with a continuous symmetry, lattice crystals, and entropy inequalities. It also includes work on classical thermodynamics, a discipline that, despite many claims to the contrary, is logically independent of statistical mechanics and deserves a rigorous and unambiguous foundation of its own. The articles in this volume have been carefully annotated by the editors.

The book is based on the lectures given at the CIME school "Quantum many body systems" held in the summer of 2010. It provides a tutorial introduction to recent advances in the mathematics of interacting systems, written by four leading experts in the field: V. Rivasseau illustrates the applications of constructive Quantum Field Theory to 2D interacting electrons and their relation to quantum gravity; R. Seiringer describes a proof of Bose-Einstein condensation in the Gross-Pitaevski limit and explains the effects of rotating traps and the emergence of lattices of quantized vortices; J.-P. Solovej gives an introduction to the theory of quantum Coulomb systems and to the functional analytic methods used to prove their thermodynamic stability; finally, T. Spencer explains the supersymmetric approach to Anderson localization and its relation to the theory of random matrices. All the lectures are characterized by their mathematical rigor combined with physical insights.

In Statistical Physics one of the ambitious goals is to derive rigorously, from statistical mechanics, the thermodynamic properties of models with realistic forces. Elliott Lieb is a mathematical physicist who meets the challenge of statistical mechanics head on, taking nothing for granted and not being content until the purported consequences have been shown, by rigorous analysis, to follow from the premises. The present volume contains a selection of his contributions to the field, in particular papers dealing with general properties of Coulomb systems, phase transitions in systems with a continuous symmetry, lattice crystals, and entropy inequalities. It also includes work on classical thermodynamics, a discipline that, despite many claims to the contrary, is logically independent of statistical mechanics and deserves a rigorous and unambiguous foundation of its own. The articles in this volume have been carefully annotated by the editors.

This is the third Selecta of publications of Elliott Lieb, the first two being Stabil ity of Matter: From Atoms to Stars, edited by Walter Thirring, and Inequalities, edited by Michael Loss and Mary Beth Ruskai. A companion fourth Selecta on Statistical Mechanics is also edited by us. Elliott Lieb has been a pioneer of the discipline of mathematical physics as it is nowadays understood and continues to lead several of its most active directions today. For the first part of this selecta we have made a selection of Lieb's works on Condensed Matter Physics. The impact of Lieb's work in mathematical con densed matter physics is unrivaled. It is fair to say that if one were to name a founding father of the field, Elliott Lieb would be the only candidate to claim this singular position. While in related fields, such as Statistical Mechanics and Atomic Physics, many key problems are readily formulated in unambiguous mathematical form, this is less so in Condensed Matter Physics, where some say that rigor is "probably impossible and certainly unnecessary." By carefully select ing the most important questions and formulating them as well-defined mathemat ical problems, and then solving a good number of them, Lieb has demonstrated the quoted opinion to be erroneous on both counts. What is true, however, is that many of these problems turn out to be very hard. It is not unusual that they take a decade (even several decades) to solve."

This book contains a unique survey of the mathematically rigorous results about the quantum-mechanical many-body problem that have been obtained by the authors in the past seven years. It is a topic that is not only rich mathematically, using a large variety of techniques in mathematical analysis, but it is also one with strong ties to current experiments on ultra-cold Bose gases and Bose-Einstein condensation. It is an active subject of ongoing research, and this book provides a pedagogical entry into the field for graduate students and researchers. It is an outgrowth of a course given by the authors for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers at the Oberwolfach Research Institute in 2004. The book also provides a coherent summary of the field and a reference for mathematicians and physicists active in research on quantum mechanics.