Table of Contents

Percolation: Percolating Phase Transition; In One and Two Dimensions, and in the Bethe Lattice; Geometric Properties of Clusters; Scaling Ansatz, Scaling Functions and Scaling Relations; Universality; Real-Space Renormalisation Group; Ising Model: Review of Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics; Symmetry Breaking; Ferromagnetic Phase Transition; In One and Two Dimensions, and in the Mean-Field; Landau Theory of Continuous Phase Transitions; Scaling Ansatz, Scaling Functions and Scaling Relations; Universality; Real-Space Renormalisation Group; Self-Organised Criticality: BTW Model in One and Two Dimensions, and in the Mean-Field; A Rice Pile Experiment and the Oslo Model; Earthquakes and the OFC Model; Rainfall; Self-Organised Criticality as a Unifying Principle.

Reviews

"Personally, I enjoyed reading this book very much. The arguments are clear and draw attention to a number of useful insights ... Students will find the presentation on self-organized criticality fun to read, particularly because it deals with real phenomena, such as earthquakes, rice-pile avalanches and rainfall ... I strongly agree with these authors that undergraduates need to be exposed to issues related to complexity and criticality. Their textbook is the first that I have seen that makes developing such courses feasible."Mathematical Reviews