Statistical Mechanics

'This is an excellent book from which to learn the methods and results of statistical mechanics.' Nature 'A well written graduate-level text for scientists and engineers... Highly recommended for graduate-level libraries.' Choice


This highly successful text, which first appeared in the year 1972 and has continued to be popular ever since, has now been brought up-to-date by incorporating the remarkable developments in the field of 'phase transitions and critical phenomena' that took place over the intervening years. This has been done by adding three new chapters (comprising over 150 pages and containing over 60 homework problems) which should enhance the usefulness of the book for both students and instructors. We trust that this classic text, which has been widely acclaimed for its clean derivations and clear explanations, will continue to provide further generations of students a sound training in the methods of statistical physics.


Historical introduction; The statistical basis of thermodynamics; Elements of the ensemble theory; The canonical ensemble; The grand canonical ensemble; Formulation of quantum statistics; The theory of simple gases; Ideal Bose systems; Ideal Fermi systems; Statistical mechanics of interacting systems: The method of cluster explansions, the method of quantized fields; Phase transitions: critically, universality and scaling, exact (or almost exact) results for the various models, the renormalization group approach; Fluctuations.