Elements of Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics

Balakrishnan (physics, Indian Institute of Technology) writes for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students, considering those studying statistical physics, biological physics, and complex systems. In 17 concise chapters and a remarkable collection of appendices be describes the Langevin equation, the fluctuation-dissipation relation, auto-correlation of velocity, Markov processes, the Fokker-Planck equation, the diffusion equation, diffusion in a finite region, Brownian motion, first-passage time, displacement phase-space Fokker-Planck equations, diffusion as a potential, diffusion in a magnetic field, Kubo-Green formulas, dynamic mobility, and the generalized Langevin equation. Topics of appendices include Gaussian integrals, the gamma function, the exponential of a 2x2 matrix, the Wiener-Khinchin Theorem and the power spectrum of a random pulse sequence. The result is remarkably self-contained and may be suitable for self-study as well as classroom use. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

V. 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.