This wide-ranging and accessible book serves as a fascinating guide to the strategies and concepts that help us understand the boundaries between physics, on the one hand, and sociology, economics, and biology on the other. From cooperation and criticality to flock dynamics and fractals, the author addresses many of the topics belonging to the broad theme of complexity. He chooses excellent examples (requiring no prior mathematical knowledge) to illuminate these ideas and their implications. The lively style and clear description of the relevant models will appeal both to novices and those with an existing knowledge of the field.

The book covers the basics and some generalizations of Monte Carlo methods and its applications to discrete and field theoretic models. It covers the study of nonequilibrium models of granular media by computer simulation and pattern formation. Furthermore, the lectures deal with details of phenomena such as chaos, segregation, pattern formation and phase transitions, convection, fluidification, density waves, surface reaction and growth, spread of epidemics, acoustics, deformation, etc. The book addresses students in physics and scientific computation. It should be a valuable reference work for researchers as well.

This wide-ranging and accessible book serves as a fascinating guide to the strategies and concepts that help us understand the boundaries between physics, on the one hand, and sociology, economics, and biology on the other. From cooperation and criticality to flock dynamics and fractals, the author addresses many of the topics belonging to the broad theme of complexity. He chooses excellent examples (requiring no prior mathematical knowledge) to illuminate these ideas and their implications. The lively style and clear description of the relevant models will appeal both to novices and those with an existing knowledge of the field.

This book provides an introduction to nonequilibrium statistical physics via lattice models. Beginning with an introduction to the basic driven lattice gas, the early chapters discuss the relevance of this lattice model to certain natural phenomena, examining simulation results in detail. Later chapters discuss absorbing-state transitions, and examine a variety of systems subject to dynamic disorder. The book discusses the effects of multiparticle rules, nonunique absorbing-states and conservation laws, as well as the use of methods such as mean-field theory, Monte Carlo simulation and the concept of universality. It also includes detailed references and examples using simple respresentations of nature to describe real systems.

This book provides an introduction to nonequilibrium statistical physics via lattice models. Beginning with an introduction to the basic driven lattice gas, the early chapters discuss the relevance of this lattice model to certain natural phenomena and examine simulation results in detail. Several possible theoretical approaches to the driven lattice gas are presented. In the next two chapters, absorbing-state transitions are discussed in detail. The later chapters examine a variety of systems subject to dynamic disorder before returning to look at the more surprising effects of multiparticle rules, nonunique absorbing-states and conservation laws. Examples are given throughout the book, the emphasis being on using simple representations of nature to describe ordering in real systems. The use of methods such as mean-field theory, Monte Carlo simulation, and the concept of universality to study and interpret these models is described. Detailed references are included.