Description
This book deals with the basic principles, techniques, and advances being made--both experimentally and theoretically--in the study of nonequilibrium phenomena, particularly in statistical physics, chemical physics, biological physics, complex systems, and several other areas. Accessible to senior undergraduate students and post-graduate students, this self-contained book offers a choice of topics that enables them to form a coherent picture of the subject. Coverage includes equations and formulas for calculating distribution, diffusion, and dynamic mobility under different conditions. The book concludes with a generalized Langevin equation and the power spectrum of pulse sequences.Table of ContentIntroduction The Langevin Equation The Fluctuation-dissipation relationship The Velocity autocorrelation function Markov Processes The Fokker-Planck equation and the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck distribution Mean-squared displacement from the Langevin equation The Fokker Planck equation in phase space The diffusion equation Brownian motion Diffusion in a force field The Kubo-Green formula The dynamic mobility as a generalized susceptibility Power spectrum of a random process The generalized Langevin equation Power spectrum of a random pulse sequence Bibliography Index Biographical NoteV. Balakrishnan has been a professor at the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, since 1980. He joined IIT Madras after working for some years at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai) and the Reactor Research Centre, Department of Atomic Energy (kalpakkam). He was educated at the University of Delhi and Brandeis University, USA, from where he got his PhD in theoretical high energy phyisics in 1970. His research interests have spanned many areas over the years, including high energy physics, many-body theory, condensed matter physics, stochastic processes, probabilistic techniques, quantum dynamics, nonlinear dynamics and chaos. He has published numerous research papers in these areas, a number of popular pedagogic articles, and has co-authored a monograph titled Beyond the Crystalline State on certain aspects of condensed matter physics. Over the past three decades, Professor Balakrishnan has taught a wide variety of extremely popular courses at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels, comprising all the standard subjects in physics, as well as some new, non-traditional ones. In addition to receiving accolades for his teaching at IIT Madras, his lectures at numerous courses sponsored by the UGC, DST (SERC), and the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) have been well-received by their attendees. Dr. Balakrishnan has held visiting positions at several institutions abroad. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences.
