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This second edition presents a comprehensive overview of nonequilibrium statistical physics, covering the underlying theory, key aspects of nonequilibrium phase transitions, and modern applications. The book is accessible to graduate students and a pedagogical approach is adopted throughout.
List of contents
Preface to the second edition; Acknowledgements; Notations and acronyms; 1. Kinetic theory and the Boltzmann equation; 2. Brownian motion, Langevin and Fokker-Planck equations; 3. Fluctuations and their probability; 4. Linear response theory and transport phenomena; 5. From equilibrium to out-of-equilibrium phase transitions: Driven lattice gases; 6. Absorbing phase transitions; 7. Stochastic dynamics of surfaces and interfaces; 8. Phase-ordering kinetics; 9. Highlights on pattern formation; Appendix A: Binary elastic collisions in the hard sphere gas; Appendix B: Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution in the uniform case; Appendix C: Physical quantities from the Boltzmann equation in the nonuniform Case; Appendix D: Outine of the Chapman-Enskog method; Appendix E: First-order approximation to Hydrodynamics; Appendix F: Spectral properties of stochastic matrices; Appendix G: The deterministic KPZ equation and the Burgers equation; Appendix J: Stochastic differential equation for the energy of the Brownian particle; Appendix K: The Kramers-Moyal expansion; Appendix L: Probability distributions; Appendix M: The diffusion equation and the Random Walk; Appendix N: Linear response in quantum systems; Appendix O: Mathematical properties of response functions; Appendix P: The Van der Waals equation; Appendix Q: Derivation of the Ginzburg-Landau free energy; Appendix R: The perturbative renormalization group for KPZ; Appendix S: TASEP: Map method and simulations; Appendix T: Bridge Model: Mean-field and simulations; Appendix U: The Allen-Cahn equation; Appendix V: The Gibbs-Thomson relation; Appendix W: The Rayleigh-Bénard instability; Appendix X: General conditions for the Turing instability; Appendix Y: Steady states of the one-dimensional TDGL equation; Appendix Z: Multiscale analysis; Index.
About the author
Roberto Livi is Honorary Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Florence and an associate member of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) and of the Institute for Complex Systems of the National Research Council (CNR). His research is focused on nonequilibrium statistical physics, and he has extensive experience teaching courses on statistical physics. He is the current President of the Italian Society of Statistical Physics.Paolo Politi is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Complex Systems of the National Research Council (CNR), and Fellow of the Marie Curie Association, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Japan Society for the promotion of Science. He currently teaches a course on stochastic processes and nonequilibrium statistical physics at the University of Florence. He was awarded the Outreach Prize of the Italian Physical Society.
