Below you will find a list of suggested topics for the Term Paper for this class, Physics 504: Statistical Mechanics. You will also find the relevant bibliography for each topic.

The Statistical Mechanics of polymers.

P. G. deGennes, ``Scaling Concepts in Polymer Physics", Cornell University Press (1980)

S. F. Edwards, Proc. Phys. Soc. 85, 613 (1965)

Statistical Mechanics of Liquid Crystals

P.G. de Gennes and J. Prost, "The Physics of Liquid Crystals", Chapters 1,2 and 10.

P.M. Chaikin & T.C. Lubensky, "Principles of Condensed Matter Physics", Chapter 6.

Kosterlitz-Thouless theory in two-dimensional superfluids, melting and spin systems.

J. M. Kosterlitz and D.J. Thouless, J. Phys. C6, 1181 (1973)

J.V. Jose, L.P. Kadanoff, S. Kirkpatrick and D.R. Nelson, Phys. Rev. B 16, 1217 (1977)

D. R. Nelson and B. I. Halperin, Phys. Rev. B 19, 2457 (1979)

The superfluid transition in helium

R. P. Feynman, "Statistical Mechanics", W. Benjamin, 1973, Chapter 11.

Non-Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics: Large Deviation Theory

Y. Oono, Prog. Theor. Phys. Supp. 99, 165-205 (1989).

Percolation

D.Stauffer and A. Aharony, "Introduction to Percolation Theory", Taylor & Francis, 1992.

F.Y. Wu, Rev. Mod. Phys. 54, 235 (1982).

Lattice Gauge Theories and Phase transitions

J.B. Kogut, Rev. Mod. Phys. 51, 659 (1979).

Theory of Spin Glasses.

S.F. Edwards and P. W. Anderson, J. Phys. F 5, 965 (1975); J. Phys. F 6, 1927 (1975).

D. Sherrington and S. Kirkpatrick, Phys. Rev. Lett. 35, 1792 (1975).

K. Binder and A. P. Young, Rev. Mod. Phys. 58, 801 (1986).

Renormalization Group approach to Spin Systems

L.P. Kadanoff, "Statistical Physics: Statistics, Dynamics and Renormalization", World Scientific, 2000, Chapters 13 and 14 and references therein.

The physics of the quark-gluon plasma

Larry McLerran , Rev. Mod. Phys. 58, 1021 (1986)

The renormalization group in the theory of critical behavior

M. E. Fisher, Rev. Mod. Phys. 46, 597 (1974)

Duality Transformations in Statistical Mechanics

H. Kramers and G. Wannier, Phys. Rev. 60, 252 (1941)

R. Savit, Rev. Mod. Phys. 52, 453 (1980)

L.P. Kadanoff, "Statistical Physics: Statistics, Dynamics and Renormalization", World Scientific, 2000, Chapter 15.

Quantum Phase Transitions

J.A. Hertz, Phys. Rev. B. 14, 1165 (1976)

Subir Sachdev, "Quantum Phase Transitions" Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Dynamics of Earthquake Faults

J. M. Carlson, J. S. Langer, and B. E. Shaw, Rev. Mod. Phys. 66, 657-670 (1994)

Critical Dynamics of continuous phase transitions:

P.C. Hohenberg and B.I. Halperin, Rev. Mod. Phys. 49, 435 (1977).

Phase Transitions in Quantum Field Theory

J.I. Kapusta, "Finite-temperature Field Theory", Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989.

Brain, neural networks, and computation

D. Amit, "Modeling Brain Function", Cambridge University Press, 1989

J. J. Hopfield, Rev. Mod. Phys.71S, 431 (1999)

Modeling molecular motors

F. Jülicher, A. Ajdari, and J. Prost Rev. Mod. Phys. 69, 1269-1282 (1997)

The Statistical Physics of Money

Jean-Philippe Bouchaud and Marc Potters, "Theory of Financial Risks: From Statistical Physics to Risk Management", Cambridge University Press (2000).

J.-P. Bouchaud and D. Sornette, "The Black-Scholes option pricing problem in mathematical finance: Generalization and extensions for a large class of stochastic processes", J.Phys.I France 4, 863-881 (1994)

D. Sornette, A. Johansen and J.-P. Bouchaud, "Stock market crashes, Precursors and Replicas", J.Phys.I France 6, n1, 167-175 (1996)

Black Hole Entropy

A. Strominger and C. Vafa, ``Microscopic Origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking Entropy", Phys. Lett. B379 (1996) 99-104

Juan M. Maldacena, ``Black Holes in String Theory", hep-th/9607235.

Juan Maldacena and Andrew Strominger, `` Statistical Entropy of Four-Dimensional Extremal Black Holes", Phys.Rev.Lett. 77 (1996) 428-429