Geometry and Topology in Hamiltonian Dynamics and Statistical Mechanics

Download or read book Geometry and Topology in Hamiltonian Dynamics and Statistical Mechanics written by Marco Pettini and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-06-14 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book covers a new explanation of the origin of Hamiltonian chaos and its quantitative characterization. The author focuses on two main areas: Riemannian formulation of Hamiltonian dynamics, providing an original viewpoint about the relationship between geodesic instability and curvature properties of the mechanical manifolds; and a topological theory of thermodynamic phase transitions, relating topology changes of microscopic configuration space with the generation of singularities of thermodynamic observables. The book contains numerous illustrations throughout and it will interest both mathematicians and physicists.