scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1460447

Review text

In the meantime, there has been an explosion in the intensity and variety of nonlinear dynamics research, and especially in the theory of deterministic chaos. This together with a critical behavior and renormalization techniques have been used as new tools in reformulation of statistical physics. Leo Kadanoff has been engaged very actively in these matters, directly or indirectly, for about forty years, now. Besides, during the last twenty-five years he has devoted a considerable effort to the development of teaching programs of statistical physics at the University of Chicago. The material presented in the reviewed book was tried out by the author in two courses, one is a graduate level survey of statistical physics and the other is a rather personal perspective on critical behavior, especially on renormalization techniques. Thus, the book defines a progression starting at the book learning part of graduate education and ending in the midst of topics at the research level. To supplement the research-level side the book includes some research papers reprints, several of which are classics in the field, including a suite of half a dozen works on self-organized criticality and complexity, a pair on diffusion limited aggreation, some on correlations near critical points, a few of the basic sources in the development of the real-space renormalization. In addition to genuine classics, Kadanoff has included a few of his own papers, which are in fact also classical in a sense, now. Notes, as Kadanoff often calls his book, can be divided into four parts. In the first part (Chapters 1-4) the statistical mechanics of Hamiltonian dynamics is discussed. The Ising model and the Gaussian system are introduced. Finally, an intimate link between quantum theory and statis- tical mechanics is made. The second part (Chapters 5-7) then discusses how equilibrium arises from dynamics. As a prototypical dynamical problem, a random walk on a lattice is described in detail. Thereafter, the dynamics of Brownian, i.e., a heavy particle moving through a gas a lighter ones, is presented. The relation between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, a description of grand canonical ensemble to be used for a treatment of highly degenerate quantum systems within statistical mechanics makes the content of the third part (Chapters 8-9). This part concludes with degenerate Fermi systems and phase transitions to a Bose condensate state. The major part (Chapters 10-17) is a consideration of phase transitions, critical phenomena and renormalization techniques. It is natural, as these are fields where Kadanoff has reached many original achievements. Here, the mean field theory approach to critical phenomena is described and it is argued that the mean field theory is incomplete and even incorrect for the description of the behavior very near a critical point. So a replacement phenomenological theory: the scaling/universality theory of critical phenomena is given. It is shown that renormalization concepts provide a justification for such phenomenological theory. Two dimensional examples are developed in more detail through ``real space renormalization techniques. The lectures (notes) end with two ``advanced topics: duality and the planar model. In the book results of experiments as well as of computer simulations are used if appropriate. Besides many excercises are included and some of them ask for computer generated numerical results. But the notes do not contain any software tools. The size of the book is larger than standard ones. Also the volume is rather large, almost 500 pages. Probably this could be the reason why the author prophetically presupposes: ``The reader will see defects in presentation, in wording, in the figures, and in the use of LATEX. But one must say these are very minor and in principle do not disturb the reader so much. Summarizing, this masterly written book on modern statistical physics by the old master in the field can be highly recommended as an excellent graduated textbook on statistical physics as well as a source on research in this very progressive field of nonlinear science.

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