Lectures On Phase Transitions And The Renormalization Group (Frontiers in Physics, 85) (Paperback)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 414 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press; illustrated edition edition (July 20, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201554097
• ISBN-13: 978-0201554090
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #532,716 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful introduction to critical phenomena, March 19, 2007

By	TOE (Paris, France) - See all my reviews

This book stands clearly to me as the best one on the vast and fascinating subject of phase transitions, critical phenomena and the renormalization group. My other references are Binney et al., Le Bellac and Yeomans. Nigel Goldenfeld's course is the most suitable for a first contact with the field. It stresses in a exceptional way the ideas lying under each concept and has a gift for explaining what's really going on beyond the equations. This can most clearly be seen with his careful discussion of ergodicity and symmetry breaking.
Moreover, this book is remarkable in that it presents various openings on modern issues ; it includes an overview of disordered systems and a rather complete discussion of dynamical critical phenomena.
After reading this book, you'll probably be ready to fully appreciate the typical treaties on critical phenomena, which use more sharp technical tools but which require a good understanding of the associated physics you'll only find so beautifully presented in Nigel Goldenfeld's book.

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I could *become* a classic, November 16, 1999

By A Customer

As other reader has put, this is not a classic book, in that the main focus is renormalization group, which is certainly a very dynamic field. Nevertheless, the introduction and discusion of other topics I find very good, so time and time I come back to this book to read again about some other topic which is *not* the RG (ergodicity, the Ising model, dynamics...).

5 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Book -- but not a classic, May 14, 1999

By A Customer

"Lectures on Phase Transitions and the Renormalization Group" is a good text, and a wonderful place to learn about the remormalization group in terms of real physical systems many of which can be measured in your basement (as opposed to HEP which, unless your basement happens to include fermilab is out-of-reach). This book is not a classic, not because it is a poor book, but because this is a dynamical area of modern research.