This reference and text treats the broadly applicable area of nonequilibrium statistical physics and concentrates the modelling and characterisation of dissipative phenomena. A variety of examples from diverse disciplines, such as condensed matter physics, materials science, metallurgy, chemical physics, are discussed. Dattagupta employs a broad framework of stochastic processes and master equation techniques to obtain models for a range of experimentally relevant phenomena such as classical and quantum Brownian motion, spin dynamics, kinetics of phase ordering, relaxation in glasses, and dissipative tunnelling. This book will serve as a graduate/research level textbook since it offers considerable utility to experimentalists, computational physicists and theorists.

Compensates the lack of a textbook in noneqilibrium statistical physics

Inhalt
1 Diffusion Processes.- 2 Kinetic Ising Models.- 3 An Overview of Phase Ordering Dynamics.- 4 Domain Growth in Systems with Quenched Disorder.- 5 Surface-Directed Spinodal Decomposition and Surface Enrichment.- 6 Phase Ordering Dynamics in the Complex Ginzburg-Landau Equation.- 7 Quantum Dissipative Systems.- 8 Dissipative Two-State Systems.- 9 Quantum Diffusion.- 10 Coherence and Decoherence.- References.