Statistical Physics of Fields

While many scientists are familiar with fractals, fewer are familiar with scale-invariance and universality which underlie the ubiquity of their shapes. These properties may emerge from the collective behaviour of simple fundamental constituents, and are studied using statistical field theories. Initial chapters connect the particulate perspective developed in the companion volume, to the coarse grained statistical fields studied here. Based on lectures taught by Professor Kardar at MIT, this textbook demonstrates how such theories are formulated and studied. Perturbation theory, exact solutions, renormalization groups, and other tools are employed to demonstrate the emergence of scale invariance and universality, and the non-equilibrium dynamics of interfaces and directed paths in random media are discussed. Ideal for advanced graduate courses in statistical physics, it contains an integrated set of problems, with solutions to selected problems at the end of the book and a complete set available to lecturers at (http://www.cambridge.org/9780521873413) www.cambridge.org/9780521873413 .

While many scientists are familiar with fractals, fewer are familiar with scale-invariance and universality which underly the ubiquity of their shapes. These properties may emerge from the collective behaviour of simple fundamental constituents, and are studied using statistical field theories. Initial chapters connect the particulate perspective developed in the companion volume, to the coarse grained statistical fields studied here. Based on lectures taught by Professor Kardar at MIT, this textbook demonstrates how such theories are formulated and studied. Perturbation theory, exact solutions, renormalization groups, and other tools are employed to demonstrate the emergence of scale invariance and universality, and the non-equilibrium dynamics of interfaces and directed paths in random media are discussed. Ideal for advanced graduate courses in statistical physics, it contains an integrated set of problems, with solutions to selected problems at the end of the book and a complete set available to lecturers at www.cambridge.org/9780521873413.

"Covering the more advanced applications of statistical mechanics, this textbook is ideal for advanced graduate students in physics. It is based on lectures for a course in statistical physics taught by Professor Kardar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The large number of integrated problems introduce the reader to novel applications such as percolation and roughening. The selected solutions at the end of the book are ideal for self-study and honing calculation methods."--Page 4 of cover This textbook demonstrates how statistical field theories are formulated and studied. Initial chapters connect the particulate perspective developed in the companion volume, to the coarse grained statistical fields studied here. Ideal for advanced graduate courses in statistical physics; some solutions are provided with a full set for lecturers at www.cambridge.org/9780521873413.