Preface

Summary

This book is based on a course which I have taught over many years to graduate students in several physics departments. Students have been mainly candidates for physics degrees but have included a scattering of people from other departments including chemical engineering, materials science and chemistry. I take a “reductionist” view, that implicitly assumes that the basic program of physics of complex systems is to connect observed phenomena to fundamental physical laws as represented at the molecular level by Newtonian mechanics or quantum mechanics. While this program has historically motivated workers in statistical physics for more than a century, it is no longer universally regarded as central by all distinguished users of statistical mechanics some of whom emphasize the phenomenological role of statistical methods in organizing data at macroscopic length and time scales with only qualitative, and often only passing, reference to the underlying microscopic physics. While some very useful methods and insights have resulted from such approaches, they generally tend to have little quantitative predictive power. Further, the recent advances in first principles quantum mechanical methods have put the program of predictive quantitative methods based on first principles within reach for a broader range of systems. Thus a text which emphasizes connections to these first principles can be useful.

The level here is similar to that of popular books such as those by Landau and Lifshitz, Huang and Reichl. The aim is to provide a basic understanding of the fundamentals and some pivotal applications in the brief space of a year.