Basic Concepts for Simple and Complex Liquids - Barrat, Jean-Louis

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Résumé :
This book presents a unified approach to the liquid state, focussing on the concepts and theoretical methods that are necessary for an understanding of the physics and chemistry of liquids. The authors do not attempt to cover the whole field in an encyclopedic manner. Instead, important ideas are presented in a concise and rigorous manner, and illustrated with examples from both simple molecular liquids and more complex soft condensed matter systems such as polymers, colloids or liquid crystals. After a general chapter introducing the liquid state, the book is in four parts devoted to thermodynamics, structure and fluctuations, phase transitions, interfaces and inhomogeneous fluids, and, finally, transport and dynamics. Each chapter introduces a new set of closely related concepts and theoretical methods, which are then illustrated by a number of specific applications covering a broad range of physical situations. Accessible to graduate students with a basic knowledge of statistical physics or physical chemistry, this advanced text will be useful to physicists, chemists or chemical engineers seeking a broad-scope introduction to the liquid state of matter, from thermodynamics and structure to transport properties and activated dynamics.

Biographie:
Jean-Louis Barrat graduated from ENS Paris, and obtained his Ph.D. from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI) in 1987. He was a postdoc at the TU in Munich and at UCSB, and worked as a CNRS associate at ENS Lyon. He is now a professor at the University of Lyon, where he heads the condensed matter theory group. His research interests cover application of statistical physics and computer simulation to various aspects of material sciences, e.g. interfaces, glasses and amorphous systems, clusters, and polymers. Jean-Pierre Hansen obtained a Ph.D. in Physics at the Université de Paris-Sud in 1969, and was appointed Professor of Physics at Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI). In 1987 he moved to the newly created Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, where he headed the Physics Department until 1997, when he was appointed to the Chair of Theoretical Chemistry at Cambridge University. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2002. J. P. Hansen has made important contributions in statistical mechanics of simple and complex liquids, of quantum fluids and of dense plasmas.

Sommaire:
["Thermodynamics, structure and fluctuations","Phase transitions","Interfaces and inhomogeneous fluids","Dynamics"]