Statistical physics. An advanced approach with applications

Publication date 3 November 1998

As the author of this book points out in the preface, todays working physicist is likely to require a good deal more of ``statistical skills than are traditionally acquired in the common undergraduate physics education (at least in Germany). The book under review is thus an attempt to provide a comprehensive textbook that should furnish a broad coverage of the material from probability and statistics a physics student should learn; this includes the traditional canon of statistical mechanics, but goes well beyond this. The title of the book is then to be understood as ``Statistics for Physicists. The book has two parts: The first and by far larger, ``Modelling of Statistical Systems, is a mixture of an introduction to probability theory and a (brief) undergraduate text on statistical mechanics. After an introduction outlining the concept of the book, Chapter 2 introduces the fundamental concepts of probability theory, starting with random variables and ending with large deviation theory. The following Chapter 3 is a brief exposition of classical thermodynamics. Chapter 4 introduces random fields. In particular, Markov fields and Gibbs fields are discussed. Phase transitions are studied in the examples of the Curie-Weiss model and the two-dimensional Ising model, and the chapter ends with a brief exposition of the renormalization group and scaling theory. Chapter 5 is a short course on stochastic processes, while the following Chapter 6 deals with quantum statistical mechanics. The last chapter of the first part deals with time-dependent statistical mechanics. The second part of the book ``Analysis of Statistical Systems contains an introduction to statistics with some particular applications. Its first Chapter 8 introduces the basic statistical techniques of parameter estimation. Chapter 9 covers signal analysis (including an introduction to wavelet transforms), and the final Chapter 10 is a brief introduction to non-parametric statistics. A large number of problems give the student occasion to test the skills acquired. Given the broad range of topics treated, the level of coverage is naturally rather superficial (and, in the reviewer's opinion, unnecessarily imprecise with regard to mathematical concepts), and a student will have to draw on more specialized sources to really acquire a working knowledge of the subject. It is however to be hoped with the author that the book will awaken the interest of more physicists for probability and statistics.

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