Statistical physics of non-thermal phase transitions. From foundations to applications (Q476421)

Synergetics equals the art of improving system performances by putting them all together. As a result, we have to expect that a book in synergetics describes a somewhat unified use of various areas in physics. And not surprisingly, it is still the case here with the present book in which one shows that fractals are pervasive everywhere in the Ising model, percolation, damage phenomena, renormalization group and scaling. Another philosophy underlying synergetics is that it intends to generalize the formalism of statistical physics in such a way that the latter is applicable to systems which at first glance would be outside from its area of application, here referred to as non-thermal systems -- for instance, stock market, traffic jams, polymerization, catastrophes and self-organized systems. Another short characterization of the book is that it applies the formalism of statistical physics to natural complex systems. The chapters are almost self-containing. It is a nice book quite suitable for a personal library.