Statistical Mechanics

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Product Description

'This is an excellent book from which to learn the methods and results of statistical mechanics.' Nature 'A well written graduate-level text for scientists and engineers... Highly recommended for graduate-level libraries.' Choice



This highly successful text, which first appeared in the year 1972 and has continued to be popular ever since, has now been brought up-to-date by incorporating the remarkable developments in the field of 'phase transitions and critical phenomena' that took place over the intervening years. This has been done by adding three new chapters (comprising over 150 pages and containing over 60 homework problems) which should enhance the usefulness of the book for both students and instructors. We trust that this classic text, which has been widely acclaimed for its clean derivations and clear explanations, will continue to provide further generations of students a sound training in the methods of statistical physics.

Statistical Mechanics Review

There are a number of lukewarm reviews of this textbook on this site, and few positive ones. I feel it deserves to be thrown into a better light, and will attempt to respond to some of these negative reviews.

First, I disagree wholeheartedly with the reviewer Fayngold. I find that this text is much more accessible than, for example, Huang. You do not need to be an expert in stat mech before picking up this book; rather, I found that it quite clearly elucidated the subject of stat mech in a pedagogical manner, and many of the derivations (for example, deriving the conditions for Bose-Einstein condensation) to be much shorter and simpler than those in other texts. Stat mech is by nature a very mathematical subject, and this is unavoidable (though Pathria did delegate much of the mathematical stuff -- like Guassian integrals, Gamma functions, etc -- to a few concise appendices). Perhaps the reviewer did not realize that this is a graduate level, rather than undergraduate, text book. I also disagree with the reviewer that this book is comprehensive (more on that below).

In response to many of the other reviewers, I think it's worth repeating: this is a graduate level textbook. Graduate texts, in my experience, rarely attempt to provide physical insight. Rather, they are focused on rigorously deriving the laws and equations that you need in order to perform physical calculations. I'm not saying I agree with this methodology, but it does seem to be the case more often than not. If you truly want to find a textbook that is a dense morass of mathematics, try Huang. Pathria is a breath of fresh air by comparison.

Prerequisite knowledge for this text would include at least an undergraduate class in quantum mechanics (familiarity with the operator notation, the operator version of Schrodinger's equation, as well as choice of space and momentum "representations") and an acquaintance with Hamilton's canonical equations (mainly the q and p variables). Without this background, much of the latter chapters might be hard to follow.

If you are looking for a gentler introduction to statistical mechanics, I can't recommend enough "Thermal Physics" by Kittel and Kroemer. This is the de facto standard for a first course in statistical mechanics. The only drawback I see with Kittel and Kroemer is that it is an entirely quantum-based approach to statistical mechanics, and that's not what everyone is looking for. Perhaps surprisingly, or perhaps not, the quantum approach does make the mathematics easier to follow (assuming a very passing acquaintance with quantum mechanics), since you deal only with sums rather than the more complicated integrals over phase space that are required for a classical treatment.

The Table of Contents is available above and gives a good overview of the topics covered in this book. It is a complete list of topics, though I found it lacking in a couple of ways. First, there is no mention of the Boltzmann Transport Equation. For this, I recommend borrowing Huang or another text from the library. And second, there is not an in-depth treatment of the Debye theory of phonons, though I have to admit it is as good as any I've seen.

I can't speak to the problems in this text, because I have not attempted them.

Overall, I think this is the best graduate level book in statistical mechanics that I've come across, far superior to Huang or Reichl. Feynman's and Landau's books, though dated, are also worth looking into, because it's hard to beat the master instructors of physics. From my conversations with other graduate students, I think most agree that this is one of the best graduate level stat mech books out there.

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