This textbook aims to bridge a longstanding gap by presenting a rigorous yet physics-centered approach to probability theory and its applications. Despite its foundational role across nearly all areas of physics, many students exhibit notable technical and conceptual gaps in even the most basic aspects of probability. Surprisingly, these issues can persist even among those specializing in statistical mechanics.According to the authors, these shortcomings are largely a consequence o...

This book offers an informal, easy-to-understand account of topics in modern physics and mathematics. The focus is, in particular, on statistical mechanics, soft matter, probability, chaos, complexity, and models, as well as their interplay. The book features 28 key entries and it is carefully structured so as to allow readers to pursue different paths that reflect their interests and priorities, thereby avoiding an excessively systematic presentation that might stifle interest. While the ...

Scientists have always attempted to explain the world in terms of a few unifying principles. In the fifth century B.C. Democritus boldly claimed that reality is simply a collection of indivisible and eternal parts or atoms. Over the centuries his doctrine has remained a landmark, and much progress in physics is due to its distinction between subjective perception and objective reality. This book discusses theory reduction in physics, which states that the whole is nothing more than the sum...

This book reviews the basic ideas of the Law of Large Numbers with its consequences to the deterministic world and the issue of ergodicity. Applications of Large Deviations and their outcomes to Physics are surveyed. The book covers topics encompassing ergodicity and its breaking and the modern applications of Large deviations to equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical physics, disordered and chaotic systems, and turbulence.

The description of emerging collective phenomena and self-organization in systems composed of large numbers of individuals has gained increasing interest from various research communities in biology, ecology, robotics and control theory, as well as sociology and economics. Applied mathematics is concerned with the construction, analysis and interpretation of mathematical models that can shed light on significant problems of the natural sciences as well as our daily lives. To this set of pr...

This book provides an original introduction to the geometry of Minkowski space-time. A hundred years after the space-time formulation of special relativity by Hermann Minkowski, it is shown that the kinematical consequences of special relativity are merely a manifestation of space-time geometry.The book is written with the intention of providing students (and teachers) of the first years of University courses with a tool which is easy to be applied and allows the solution of any pr...

The third edition of this highly acclaimed undergraduate textbook is suitable for teaching all the mathematics for an undergraduate course in any of the physical sciences. As well as lucid descriptions of all the topics and many worked examples, it contains over 800 exercises. New stand-alone chapters give a systematic account of the 'special functions' of physical science, cover an extended range of practical applications of complex variables, and give an introduction to quantum operators...

One of TIME’s Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade"Meet the new Stephen Hawking . . . The Order of Time is a dazzling book." --The Sunday TimesFrom the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, and Anaximander comes a concise, elegant exploration of time.Why do we remember the past and not the future? What d...

"It would be hard to imagine a better guide to this difficult subject." -- Scientific AmericanIn Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Lee Smolin provides an accessible overview of the attempts to build a final "theory of everything." He explains in simple terms what scientists are talking about when they say the world is made from exotic entities such as loops, strings, and black holes and tells the fascinating stories behind these discoveries: the rivalries, epiphanie...

Any student of linear algebra will welcome this textbook, which provides a thorough treatment of this key topic. Blending practice and theory, the book enables the reader to learn and comprehend the standard methods, with an emphasis on understanding how they actually work. At every stage, the authors are careful to ensure that the discussion is no more complicated or abstract than it needs to be, and focuses on the fundamental topics. The book is ideal as a course text or for self-study. ...

Quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful scientific theory. It is also completely mad. Although the theory quite obviously works, it leaves us chasing ghosts and phantoms; particles that are waves and waves that are particles; cats that are at once both alive and dead; and lots of seemingly spooky goings-on. But if we're prepared to be a little more specific about what we mean when we talk about 'reality' and a little more circumspect in the way we think a scientific theory might...

Quantum physics is often perceived as a weird and abstract theory, which physicists must use in order to make correct predictions. But many recent experiments have shown that the weirdness of the theory simply mirrors the weirdness of phenomena: it is Nature itself, and not only our description of it, that behaves in an astonishing way. This book selects those, among these typical quantum phenomena, whose rigorous description requires neither the formalism, nor an importantbackground in ph...