Elements of Phase Transitions and Critical Phenomena
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As an introductory account of the theory of phase transitions and critical phenomena, this book reflects lectures given by the authors to graduate students at their departments and is thus classroom-tested to help beginners enter the field. Most parts are written as self-contained units and every new concept or calculation is explained in detail without assuming prior knowledge of the subject. The book significantly enhances and revises a Japanese version which is a bestseller in the Japenese market and is considered a standard textbook in the field. It contains new pedagogical presentations of field theory methods, including a chapter on conformal field theory, and various modern developments hard to find in a single textbook on phase transitions. Exercises are presented as the topics develop, with solutions found at the end of the book, making the usefil for self-teaching, as well as for classroom learning.
After spending three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie-Mellon University and Rutgers University in the US, Hidetoshi Nishimori returned to Japan, first as a research associate at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is now a professor of physics at the same Institute. He received the Nishina Memorial Prize in 2006 for his work on spin glasses. He is a Fellow of Institute of Physics.
After receiving his PhD in Theoretical Physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Gerardo Oritz continued his career in the US, first as a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and then as an Oppenheimer fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he stayed as a permanent staff member until 2006. He is currently Professor of Physics at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.