Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity, Second Edition

Random Walks and Emergent Properties
- Self-similarity and fractals
Temperature and Equilibrium
- Invariant Measures; Ergodicity
- Jupiter! and the KAM theorem
Entropy
- Does Entropy Increase?
- Shannon Entropy, Entropy of Glasses
- Life, Heat Death of the Universe, & Black Holes
Free Energies and Ensembles
- Canonical, Grand Canonical, and Gibbs
- Arrhenius laws and barrier crossing
Quantum Statistical Mechanics
- Bosons: Bose Condensation and Superfluids
- Fermions: Metals, White Dwarves, Neutron Stars
Computational Stat Mech: Ising and Markov
- Monte Carlo, Metropolis, Wolff
- Stochastic Chemistry: Cells and Gillespie
- Networks and Percolation
Order Parameters, Broken Symmetry, and Topology
- Homotopy Theory and Topological Defects
- Excitations and Goldstone's Theorem
- Dislocations, Disclinations, and Vortices
Deriving New Laws
- What is a Phase?
- Symmetry and Analyticity: Landau
Correlations, Response, and Dissipation
- Fluctuation-Dissipation
- Causality and Kramers Krönig
Abrupt Phase Transitions
- Nucleation theory: Complex Free Energies
- Coarsening; Dendrites and Snowflakes; Martensites
Continuous Phase Transitions
- Universality and the Renormalization Group
- Scale Invariance and Fractals
- Percolation, Bifurcation Theory, Routes to Chaos

Second edition
Computer exercise hints, software
New exercises developed since the publication of the second edition, and in other fields of physics
Corrections to the second edition
Jacob Alldredge's This Is Stat Mech
Chen Wang's proof that the Origami Microstructure is unfoldable in three dimensions (exercise 11.7).
An answer key to most of the exercises is available (but only to instructors teaching the course). If you are teaching the course, email sethna@lassp.cornell.edu for the solution manual. Please do not post answers to exercises from this textbook on the Web, or distribute them in electronic form.

Last modified: December 1, 2021