Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity (original) (raw)

Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity, Second Edition

Available as pdf (published second edition), and fromOxford University Press

Second edition

James Sethna

• Random Walks and Emergent Properties
  • Self-similarity and fractals
• Temperature and Equilibrium
  • Invariant Measures; Ergodicity
  • Jupiter! and the KAM theorem
• Entropy
  • Does Entropy Increase?
  • Shannon Entropy, Entropy of Glasses
  • Life, Heat Death of the Universe, & Black Holes
• Free Energies and Ensembles
  • Canonical, Grand Canonical, and Gibbs
  • Arrhenius laws and barrier crossing
• Quantum Statistical Mechanics
  • Bosons: Bose Condensation and Superfluids
  • Fermions: Metals, White Dwarves, Neutron Stars
• Computational Stat Mech: Ising and Markov
  • Monte Carlo, Metropolis, Wolff
  • Stochastic Chemistry: Cells and Gillespie
  • Networks and Percolation
• Order Parameters, Broken Symmetry, and Topology
  • Homotopy Theory and Topological Defects
  • Excitations and Goldstone's Theorem
  • Dislocations, Disclinations, and Vortices
• Deriving New Laws
  • What is a Phase?
  • Symmetry and Analyticity: Landau
• Correlations, Response, and Dissipation
  • Fluctuation-Dissipation
  • Causality and Kramers Krönig
• Abrupt Phase Transitions
  • Nucleation theory: Complex Free Energies
  • Coarsening; Dendrites and Snowflakes; Martensites
• Continuous Phase Transitions
  • Universality and the Renormalization Group
  • Scale Invariance and Fractals
  • Percolation, Bifurcation Theory, Routes to Chaos
• Second edition
• Computer exercise hints, software
• New exercises developed since the publication of the second edition, and in other fields of physics
• Corrections to the second edition
• Jacob Alldredge's This Is Stat Mech
• Chen Wang's proof that the Origami Microstructure is unfoldable in three dimensions (exercise 11.7).
• An answer key to most of the exercises is available (but only to instructors teaching the course). If you are teaching the course, email sethna@lassp.cornell.edu for the solution manual. Please do not post answers to exercises from this textbook on the Web, or distribute them in electronic form.

Last modified: December 1, 2021