In a comprehensive treatment of Statistical Mechanics from
thermodynamics through the renormalization group, this book serves as
the core text for a full-year graduate course in statistical mechanics
at either the Masters or Ph.D. level. Each chapter contains numerous
exercises, and several chapters treat special topics which can be used
as the basis for student projects.
The concept of scaling is introduced early and used extensively
throughout the text. At the heart of the book is an extensive treatment
of mean field theory, from the simplest decoupling approach, through the
density matrix formalism, to self-consistent classical and quantum field
theory as well as exact solutions on the Cayley tree. Proceeding beyond
mean field theory, the book discusses exact mappings involving Potts
models, percolation, self-avoiding walks and quenched randomness,
connecting various athermal and thermal models. Computational methods
such as series expansions and Monte Carlo simulations are discussed,
along with exact solutions to the 1D quantum and 2D classical Ising
models. The renormalization group formalism is developed, starting from
real-space RG and proceeding through a detailed treatment of Wilson's
epsilon expansion. Finally the subject of Kosterlitz-Thouless systems is
introduced from a historical perspective and then treated by methods due
to Anderson, Kosterlitz, Thouless and Young.
Altogether, this comprehensive, up-to-date, and engaging text offers an
ideal package for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses or for use
in self study.
