Covering the elementary aspects of the physics of phases transitions and the renormalization group, this popular book is widely used both for core graduate statistical mechanics courses as well as for more specialized courses. Emphasizing understanding and clarity rather than technical manipulation, these lectures de-mystify the subject and show precisely "how things work." Goldenfeld keeps in mind a reader who wants to understand why things are done, what the results are, and what in principle can go wrong. The book reaches both experimentalists and theorists, students and even active researchers, and assumes only a prior knowledge of statistical mechanics at the introductory graduate level.Advanced, never-before-printed topics on the applications of renormalization group far from equilibrium and to partial differential equations add to the uniqueness of this book.
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About the Author
Nigel Goldenfeld is Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (U.K.) in 1982, and for the years 1982-1985 was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara. He is a University Scholar of the University of Illinois, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a recipient of the Xerox Award for research, a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance, and was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow from 1987-1991. David Pines is research professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has made pioneering contributions to an understanding of many-body problems in condensed matter and nuclear physics, and to theoretical astrophysics. editor of Perseus’ Frontiers in Physics series and former editor of American Physical Society’s Reviews of Modern Physics, Dr. Pines is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Pines has received a number of awards, including the Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal for Contributions to Many-Body Theory; the P.A.M. Dirac Silver Medal for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics; and the Friemann Prize in Condensed Matter Physics.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
By TOE
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Elegantly crafted, well-written, and (for a book on statistical physics) very readable
November 28, 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Nigel Goldenfeld's book, "Lectures on Phase Transitions and the Renormalization Group" is clear, lucid, and very well-written. One of the most challenging things in writing such a book (I won't call it a text; but it serves well for that purpose) is in helping the reader to gain conceptual insight into the subjects, and not to simply to present a series of equations. In this, Dr. Goldenfeld succeeds admirably.
Topics that Goldenfeld discusses (most significantly; the renormalization group concept and critical phenomena) are presented in a very clear and accessible manner. In fact, his book is so useful that I have adopted his reference as my own "standard nomenclature," and have translated my previously-used notation (and also studied in such classic's as Hill's "Statistical Mechanics") to agree with Goldenfeld's.
One of the aspects that I am particularly enjoying is the care with which Goldenfeld builds the underlying logic and arguments as he approaches key points. This is very well-done, and makes this book a solid "go-to" reference in developing a well-grounded understanding of emerging yet very important topics.
Topics that Goldenfeld discusses (most significantly; the renormalization group concept and critical phenomena) are presented in a very clear and accessible manner. In fact, his book is so useful that I have adopted his reference as my own "standard nomenclature," and have translated my previously-used notation (and also studied in such classic's as Hill's "Statistical Mechanics") to agree with Goldenfeld's.
One of the aspects that I am particularly enjoying is the care with which Goldenfeld builds the underlying logic and arguments as he approaches key points. This is very well-done, and makes this book a solid "go-to" reference in developing a well-grounded understanding of emerging yet very important topics.
8 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
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...).
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