Statistical Physics of Particles

Kardar, Mehran
Mehran Kardar is Professor of Physics at MIT, where he has taught and researched in the field of Statistical Physics for the past twenty years. He received his BA in Cambridge, and gained his PhD at MIT. Professor Kardar has held research and visiting positions as a junior fellow at Harvard, a Guggenheim fellow at Oxford, UCSB, and at Berkeley as a Miller Fellow.

Statistical physics has its origins in attempts to describe the thermal properties of matter in terms of its constituent particles, and has played a fundamental role in the development of quantum mechanics. Based on lectures taught by Professor Kardar at MIT, this textbook introduces the central concepts and tools of statistical physics. It contains a chapter on probability and related issues such as the central limit theorem and information theory, and covers interacting particles, with an extensive description of the van der Waals equation and its derivation by mean field approximation. It also contains an integrated set of problems, with solutions to selected problems at the end of the book and a complete set of solutions is available to lecturers on a password protected website at cambridge.org/9780521873420. A companion volume, Statistical Physics of Fields, discusses non-mean field aspects of scaling and critical phenomena, through the perspective of renormalization group.

Textbook on statistical physics for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses.

Based on lectures taught by Professor Kardar at MIT, this textbook introduces the central concepts and tools of statistical physics. It contains a chapter on probability and covers interacting particles also including an integrated set of problems and will be invaluable for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in statistical physics. Solutions to selected problems are provided, with a complete set of solutions available to lecturers on a password protected website at cambridge.org/9780521873420. A companion volume, discusses non-mean field aspects of scaling and critical phenomena, through the perspective of renormalization group.

1. Thermodynamics; 2. Probability; 3. Kinetic theory of gases; 4. Classical statistical mechanics; 5. Interacting particles; 6. Quantum statistical mechanics; 7. Ideal quantum gases; Solutions to selected problems; Index.