The Physics of Complex Systems (New Advances and Perspectives)

Book excerpt: It is widely known that complex systems and complex materials comprise a major interdisciplinary scientific field that draws on mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine as well as such social sciences as economics. The role of statistical physics in this new field has been expanding. Statistical physics has shown how phenomena and processes in different research areas that have long been assumed to be unrelated can have a common description. Through the application of statistical physics, methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems and processes have been generalized to more complex systems. The two conceptual pillars in this approach are scaling and universality. This volume focuses on recent advances and perspectives in the physics of complex systems and provides both an overview of the field and a more detailed examination of the new ideas and unsolved problems that are currently attracting the attention of researchers. This book should be a useful reference work for anyone interested in this area, whether beginning graduate student or advanced research professional. It provides up-to-date reviews on cutting-edge topics compiled by leading authorities and is designed to both broaden the reader’s competence within their own field and encourage the exploration of new problems in related fields.