“The importance of knowledge consists not only in its direct practical utility but also in the fact the it promotes a widely contemplative habit of mind; on t

This book describes two main classes of non-equilibrium phase-transitions: static and dynamics of transitions into an absorbing state, and dynamical scaling in

This book provides an introduction to nonequilibrium statistical physics via lattice models. Beginning with an introduction to the basic driven lattice gas, the

Topological defects formed at symmetry-breaking phase transitions play an important role in many different fields of physics. They appear in many condensed-matt

This is a textbook which gradually introduces the student to the statistical mechanical study of the different phases of matter and to the phase transitions bet