Synopses & Reviews
Self-contained introduction to the applications of random walk techniques.
Review
"Excellent...In summary I warmly recommend a most rewarding and challenging textbook." Contemporary Physics, Professor D.S.F. Crothers"This is a fine work that fills a long-standing void in the study of introductory mathematical physics." The Leading Edge, John Stockwell
Table of Contents
1. Introduction to techniques; 2. Generating functions I; 3. Generating functions II: recurrence, sites visited and the role of dimensionality; 4. Boundary conditions, steady state and the electrostatic analogy; 5. Variations on the random walk; 6. The shape of a random walk; 7. Path integrals and self-avoidance; 8. Properties of the random walk: introduction to scaling; 9. Scaling of walks and critical phenomena; 10. Walks and the O(n) model: mean field theory and spin waves; 11. Scaling, fractals and renormalization; 12. More on the renormalization group.