The behaviour of matter at low temperatures is of profound significance for the understanding of a diverse range of fundamental physics, including important aspects of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, elementary particle physics and astrophysics. There is also a growing technology based on low temperatures, which is assuming a rapidly increasing importance. This book meets the need for a clear and unified introduction to physics at low temperatures and to some of these important applications.

Nature is inherently noisy and nonlinear. It is noisy in the sense that all macroscopic systems are subject to the fluctuations of their environments and also to internal fluctuations. It is nonlinear in the sense that the restoring force on a system displaced from equilibrium does not usually vary linearly with the size of the displacement. To calculate the properties of stochastic (noisy) nonlinear systems is in general extremely difficult, although considerable progress has been made in the past. The three volumes that make up Noise in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems comprise a collection of specially written authoritative reviews on all aspects of the subject, representative of all the major practitioners in the field. The second volume applies the theory of Volume 1 to the calculation of the influence of noise in a variety of contexts. These include quantum mechanics, condensed matter, noise induced transitions, escape processes and transition probabilities, systems with periodic potentials, discrete nonlinear systems, symmetry-breaking transition, and optics.

Nature is inherently noisy and nonlinear. It is noisy in the sense that all macroscopic systems are subject to the fluctuations of their environments and also to internal fluctuations. It is nonlinear in the sense that the restoring force on a system displaced from equilibrium does not usually vary linearly with the size of the displacement. To calculate the properties of stochastic (noisy) nonlinear systems is in general extremely difficult, although considerable progress has been made in the past. The three volumes that make up Noise in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems comprise a collection of specially written authoritative reviews on all aspects of the subject, representative of all the major practitioners in the field. The third volume deals with experimental aspects of the study of noise in nonlinear dynamical systems. It covers noise-driven phenomena in superfluid helium, liquid crystals, lasers and optical bistability as well as the solution of stochastic equations by digital simulation and analogue experiment.

This book is intended to provide a clear and unified introduction to the physics of matter at low temperatures, and to do so at a level accessible to researchers new to the field and to graduate and senior undergraduate students. Rapid scientific progress made over the last seven years in a number of specific areas-for example, high-Tc superconductivity and the quantum Hall effect-has inevitably rendered our earlier Matter at Low Temperatures somewhat out of date. We have therefore taken the opportunity to revise and amend the text in its entirety and, at the same time, to furnish it with what we believe to be a more apt title, emphasizing that it is with the physics of low temperatures that we are particularly concerned. Like its predecessor, Low-Temperature Physics is devoted to the fascinating and diverse phenomena that occur under conditions of extreme cold, many of which have no analogue at all in the everyday world at room temperature.

Nature is inherently noisy and nonlinear. It is noisy in the sense that all macroscopic systems are subject to the fluctuations of their environments and also to internal fluctuations. It is nonlinear in the sense that the restoring force on a system displaced from equilibrium does not usually vary linearly with the size of the displacement. To calculate the properties of stochastic (noisy) nonlinear systems is in general extremely difficult, although considerable progress has been made in the past. The three volumes that make up Noise in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems comprise a collection of specially written authoritative reviews on all aspects of the subject, representative of all the major practitioners in the field. The first volume deals with the basic theory of stochastic nonlinear systems. It includes an historical overview of the origins of the field, chapters covering some developed theoretical techniques for the study of coloured noise, and the first English-language translation of the landmark 1933 paper by Pontriagin, Andronov and Vitt.