0

I come from a statistics background and don't have much knowledge of physics. I need to gain bit of knowledge in statistical physics for one of the projects that I work on. I started looking at Reichl's and Kardar's book, but realized I needed some introductory material first on these topics.

Schroeder's book on thermodynamics was actually quite a nice introduction to that part of statistical physics. It explained a lot of the intuition behind the models as well as some of the formalism. I was wondering if anyone could suggest a similar type of introductory book for kinetics, meaning things like the Fokker-Planck equation, the Langevin equation, and the master equation, etc. I am just looking for something that provides a bit more explanation and intuition before I dive into the formalism.

Any suggestions would really be appreciated.

Qmechanic
  • 201,751
krishnab
  • 181
  • Possible duplicates: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/30550/2451 and links therein. – Qmechanic Aug 14 '19 at 21:00
  • @Qmechanic say, are you sure this is a duplicate of the other post. The other post is asking for a more advanced text in statistical mechanics. I will looking for a more introductory text on Kinetics before reading Kardar and Reichl's books. Point of fact, I actually found Reichl's notation very confusing with all the subscripts and superscripts, and Kardar seems to try and overformalize stuff. So I was hoping to understand the intuition a bit better, so that I can decode what they are trying to express with their formalism. – krishnab Aug 14 '19 at 21:07
  • I would agree, kinetic theory and statistical mechanics are two different things. Anyways, as this now closed, I'd just briefly mention two books I've worked with : S. Ichimaru: "Statistical Plasma Physics" (Addison-Wesley publishing) contains all the content you have mentioned, and doesn't overformalize. If you're interested in solving problems (and seeing solutions) then B. Smirnov: "Plasma Processes and Plasma Kineitcs" has that, and also most of the content you've asked for. Personally I don't know Schroeders book, so you might want to risk a look in the library first. – AtmosphericPrisonEscape Aug 14 '19 at 21:12
  • @AtmosphericPrisonEscape thanks so much for the suggestions. I will take a look at these books, as I have not seen recommendations for them before. So that is nice. Yeah, I just want to make sure I understand the intuition behind the equations before diving into the equations. The more advanced books assume pre-existing knowledge of some elementary physics concepts that I was not familiar with. For example Kardar's explanation of the Cournot engine assumes that the reader has studied this before. So Schroeder had a nice explanation of the intuition :). Thanks again. – krishnab Aug 14 '19 at 21:21

0 Answers0