Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity

Statistical Mechanics 6562/4488, Spring 2025
MWF, 10:10-11:00, Clark 294D
Jim Sethna sethna@lassp.cornell.edu, PSB 412, 5-5132, office hours Mon 11-12:00.
TA: Avinash Mandaiya, am2957@cornell.edu, PSB 425, office hours Fri 12:30-1:30, PSB 425K
Other key people: Amir Amhaz and Sully Bailey-Darland
sethna.lassp.cornell.edu/Teaching/562/

  • Aimed broadly at grads in physics, computer science, engineering, biology, mathematics, and the social sciences
  • Quantum mechanics will be important only for two weeks during the course. Previous statistical mechanics is not required, but extra work to catch up would be necessary. A high level of scientific sophistication, however, is expected.
  • Will use a 'flipped classroom' format, with activities during class hours and content covered in the reading.
  • Text is the second edition, Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity, second edition.
This course focuses on those topics in statistical mechanics of interest to scholars in many fields. Topics will include random walks and emergent properties; temperature and equilibrium; phase space dynamics and ergodicity; entropy; free energies; quantum statistical mechanics; calculation and computation; order parameters, broken symmetries, and topology; correlations, response, and dissipation; abrupt phase transitions; and continuous phase transitions, fractals, and the renormalization group. (Sethna's last semester teaching this course.)

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

Available at Oxford University Press

Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity, available at Oxford University Press.


Last modified: Dec. 19, 2025