SMAC

From Werner KRAUTH

W. Krauth Statistical Mechanics: Algorithms and Computations (Oxford: Oxford University Press) (2006)

This is my book on statistical mechanics, published by Oxford University Press in the

"Oxford Master Series in statistical, computational, and theoretical physics". It is widely available in book stores and libraries, and it is even quite easy to find on the internet, for example on the bookOS website (even without registering).

This book

• discusses key concepts in statistical physics using algorithms.
• discusses key concepts in algorithms using statistical physics.
• presents a pedagogical, uniform approach to subjects as diverse as Monte Carlo methods, Molecular dynamics, quantum Monte Carlo, the Ising model, cluster algorithms, etc. It is written by an experienced teacher and expert of the field.
• is completely self-contained: All you need to study the material is the book, a laptop ... and a sofa. The book heavily relies on illustrations, tables and pseudocode algorithms to convey key information, and one never needs to look up information elsewhere. All graphs and tables can be reproduced by programming at most a few dozen lines of computer code. The pseudocode used is very similar to the Python programming language.

The book's website

Published on September 14th, 2006, the first edition (second printing) is currently in stock at Oxford University Press, and at a number of European web sites (Amazon-Great Britain, -Germany, -France, etc). It is also carried by major academic bookstores.

In the United States, the book is available at Oxford University Press (US), and other US web sites (Amazon.com (US), Barnes and Noble, etc). Major academic bookstores also carry the book.

The second (uncorrected) printing of the first edition has come out in November 2008. The book's website carries a list of errata, but there haven't been so many.