Scale Invariance
From Phase Transitions to Turbulence
Authors: LESNE, Annick, Laguës, Michel
Free Preview- Offers a wide pedagogical overview of scaling concepts, techniques and applications
- Gathers information from fields which are not presented together in other textbooks
- Foreword by Nobel laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
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- About this Textbook
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During a century, from the Van der Waals mean field description (1874) of gases to the introduction of renormalization group (RG techniques 1970), thermodynamics and statistical physics were just unable to account for the incredible universality which was observed in numerous critical phenomena. The great success of RG techniques is not only to solve perfectly this challenge of critical behaviour in thermal transitions but to introduce extremely useful tools in a wide field of daily situations where a system exhibits scale invariance. The introduction of scaling, scale invariance and universality concepts has been a significant turn in modern physics and more generally in natural sciences. Since then, a new "physics of scaling laws and critical exponents", rooted in scaling approaches, allows quantitative descriptions of numerous phenomena, ranging from phase transitions to earthquakes, polymer conformations, heartbeat rhythm, diffusion, interface growth and roughening, DNA sequence, dynamical systems, chaos and turbulence. The chapters are jointly written by an experimentalist and a theorist. This book aims at a pedagogical overview, offering to the students and researchers a thorough conceptual background and a simple account of a wide range of applications. It presents a complete tour of both the formal advances and experimental results associated with the notion of scaling, in physics, chemistry and biology.
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From the reviews:
“The book begins with an introduction to scale invariance in the context of critical behaviors. … In addition to the high quality of its numerous diagrams and plots and the admirable readability of its equations and fonts, Scale Invariance is well written and surprisingly engaging. … The authors also do an excellent job of including the history of the topics they present; they make wise decisions about when to include significant historical details … . The diligent reader will benefit from Scale Invariance … .” (John R. Saylor, Physics Today, November, 2012)
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- Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Changes of States of Matter
Pages 1-41
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Fractal Geometry
Pages 43-53
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Universality as a Consequence of Scale Invariance
Pages 55-107
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Diffusion
Pages 109-165
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The Percolation Transition
Pages 167-195
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
- Download Preface 1 PDF (123 KB)
- Download Sample pages 1 PDF (1.5 MB)
- Download Table of contents PDF (67.6 KB)
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Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- Scale Invariance
- Book Subtitle
- From Phase Transitions to Turbulence
- Authors
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- Annick LESNE
- Michel Laguës
- Copyright
- 2012
- Publisher
- Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
- Copyright Holder
- Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
- eBook ISBN
- 978-3-642-15123-1
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-642-15123-1
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-3-642-15122-4
- Softcover ISBN
- 978-3-642-44896-6
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- XVI, 400
- Additional Information
- Originally published by Editions Belin, Paris, 2008
- Topics
