Topics In Statistical And Theoretical Physics
Download Topics In Statistical And Theoretical Physics PDF/ePub or read online books in Mobi eBooks. Click Download or Read Online button to get Topics In Statistical And Theoretical Physics book now. This website allows unlimited access to, at the time of writing, more than 1.5 million titles, including hundreds of thousands of titles in various foreign languages.
Topics In Statistical Mechanics (Second Edition)
Building on the material learned by students in their first few years of study, Topics in Statistical Mechanics (Second Edition) presents an advanced level course on statistical and thermal physics. It begins with a review of the formal structure of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics considered from a unified viewpoint. There is a brief revision of non-interacting systems, including quantum gases and a discussion of negative temperatures. Following this, emphasis is on interacting systems. First, weakly interacting systems are considered, where the interest is in seeing how small interactions cause small deviations from the non-interacting case. Second, systems are examined where interactions lead to drastic changes, namely phase transitions. A number of specific examples is given, and these are unified within the Landau theory of phase transitions. The final chapter of the book looks at non-equilibrium systems, in particular the way they evolve towards equilibrium. This is framed within the context of linear response theory. Here fluctuations play a vital role, as is formalised in the fluctuation-dissipation theorem.The second edition has been revised particularly to help students use this book for self-study. In addition, the section on non-ideal gases has been expanded, with a treatment of the hard-sphere gas, and an accessible discussion of interacting quantum gases. In many cases there are details of Mathematica calculations, including Mathematica Notebooks, and expression of some results in terms of Special Functions.
From Statistical Physics to Statistical Inference and Back
Author: P. Grassberger
language: en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date: 2012-12-06
Physicists, when modelling physical systems with a large number of degrees of freedom, and statisticians, when performing data analysis, have developed their own concepts and methods for making the `best' inference. But are these methods equivalent, or not? What is the state of the art in making inferences? The physicists want answers. More: neural computation demands a clearer understanding of how neural systems make inferences; the theory of chaotic nonlinear systems as applied to time series analysis could profit from the experience already booked by the statisticians; and finally, there is a long-standing conjecture that some of the puzzles of quantum mechanics are due to our incomplete understanding of how we make inferences. Matter enough to stimulate the writing of such a book as the present one. But other considerations also arise, such as the maximum entropy method and Bayesian inference, information theory and the minimum description length. Finally, it is pointed out that an understanding of human inference may require input from psychologists. This lively debate, which is of acute current interest, is well summarized in the present work.
Statistical Physics of Non Equilibrium Quantum Phenomena
This book provides an introduction to topics in non-equilibrium quantum statistical physics for both mathematicians and theoretical physicists. The first part introduces a kinetic equation, of Kolmogorov type, which is needed to describe an isolated atom (actually, in experiments, an ion) under the effect of a classical pumping electromagnetic field which keeps the atom in its excited state(s) together with the random emission of fluorescence photons which put it back into its ground state. The quantum kinetic theory developed in the second part is an extension of Boltzmann's classical (non-quantum) kinetic theory of a dilute gas of quantum bosons. This is the source of many interesting fundamental questions, particularly because, if the temperature is low enough, such a gas is known to have at equilibrium a transition, the Bose–Einstein transition, where a finite portion of the particles stay in the quantum ground state. An important question considered is how a Bose gas condensate develops in time if its energy is initially low enough.