Giovanni Gallavotti - Böcker

Scaling and self-similarity ideas and methods in theoretical physics have, in the last twenty-five years, coalesced into renormalization-group methods. This book analyzes, from a single perspective, some of the most important applications: the critical-point theory in classical statistical mechanics, the scalar quantum field theories in two and three space-time dimensions, and Tomonaga's theory of the ground state of one-dimensional Fermi systems. The dimension dependence is discussed together with the related existence of anomalies (in Tomonaga's theory and in 4 -e dimensions for the critical point). The theory of Bose condensation at zero temperature in three space dimensions is also considered. Attention is focused on results that can in principle be formally established from a mathematical point of view. The 4 -e dimensions theory, Bose condensation, as well as a few other statements are exceptions to this rule, because no complete treatment is yet available. However, the truly mathematical details are intentionally omitted and only referred to. This is done with the purpose of stressing the unifying conceptual structure rather than the technical differences or subtleties.

This volume represents the proceedings of a NATO Advanced Study Institute held at Noto, Sicily June 8-19, 1987. The director was Giovanni Gallavotti, Roma, with co-directors Marcello Anile, Catania and P. F. Zweifel, Virginia Tech. Other members of the scientific organizing committee included Mitchell Feigenbaum, Rockefeller University and David Ruelle, IHES. The attendance at the school consisted of 23 invited speakers and approximately 80 "students", the term student being in quotation marks because many of them were of post-doctoral or even professorial status, although there were also a goodly number of actual graduate students in attendance also. Because of the disparate background of these "students", it was felt advisable to include at the conference special tutorials each afternoon, in which the contents of the morning's lectures were reviewed and clarified as necessary. These tutorials, organized by Gallavotti, involved various of the speakers, organizers, and other senior members of the school, and contributed in no little way to the overall success of the school. The organizers of the school would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who assisted in these sessions, and to assure them that the results were definitely worth the effort. Also contributing to the success of the school were a number of contributed papers, presented during the course of the afternoon tutorials. Three of those papers are included in these proceedings; they are the papers of DiFrancesco; Gallimbeni, Miari and Sertorio (presented by Sertorio); and Vittot.

This 2nd edition of the book focuses on the properties of stationary states in chaotic systems of particles or fluids, setting aside the theory of how these states are achieved.

This book concentrates on the properties of the stationary states in chaotic systems of particles or fluids, leaving aside the theory of the way they can be reached.

This book concentrates on the properties of the stationary states in chaotic systems of particles or fluids, leaving aside the theory of the way they can be reached. The stationary states of particles or of fluids (understood as probability distributions on microscopic configurations or on the fields describing continua) have received important new ideas and data from numerical simulations and reviews are needed. The starting point is to find out which time invariant distributions come into play in physics. A special feature of this book is the historical approach. To identify the problems the author analyzes the papers of the founding fathers Boltzmann, Clausius and Maxwell including translations of the relevant (parts of) historical documents. He also establishes a close link between treatment of irreversible phenomena in statistical mechanics and the theory of chaotic systems at and beyond the onset of turbulence as developed by Sinai, Ruelle, Bowen (SRB) and others: the author gives arguments intending to support strongly the viewpoint that stationary states in or out of equilibrium can be described in a unified way. In this book it is the "chaotic hypothesis", which can be seen as an extension of the classical ergodic hypothesis to non equilibrium phenomena, that plays the central role. It is shown that SRB - often considered as a kind of mathematical playground with no impact on physical reality - has indeed a sound physical interpretation; an observation which to many might be new and a very welcome insight. Following this, many consequences of the chaotic hypothesis are analyzed in chapter 3 - 4 and in chapter 5 a few applications are proposed. Chapter 6 is historical: carefully analyzing the old literature on the subject, especially ergodic theory and its relevance for statistical mechanics; an approach which gives the book a very personal touch. The book contains an extensive coverage of current research (partly from the authors and his coauthorspublications) presented in enough detail so that advanced students may get the flavor of a direction of research in a field which is still very much alive and progressing. Proofs of theorems are usually limited to heuristic sketches privileging the presentation of the ideas and providing references that the reader can follow, so that in this way an overload of this text with technical details could be avoided.

Constantin presents the Euler equations of ideal incompressible fluids and the blow-up problem for the Navier-Stokes equations of viscous fluids, describing major mathematical questions of turbulence theory. These are connected to the Caffarelli-Kohn-Nirenberg theory of singularities for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, explained in Gallavotti's lectures. Kazhikhov introduces the theory of strong approximation of weak limits via the method of averaging, applied to Navier-Stokes equations. Y. Meyer focuses on nonlinear evolution equations and related unexpected cancellation properties, either imposed on the initial condition, or satisfied by the solution itself, localized in space or in time variable. Ukai discusses the asymptotic analysis theory of fluid equations, the Cauchy-Kovalevskaya technique for the Boltzmann-Grad limit of the Newtonian equation, the multi-scale analysis, giving compressible and incompressible limits of the Boltzmann equation, and the analysis of their initial layers.

Intended for beginners in ergodic theory, this book addresses students as well as researchers in mathematical physics. The main novelty is the systematic treatment of characteristic problems in ergodic theory by a unified method in terms of convergent power series and renormalization group methods, in particular. Basic concepts of ergodicity, like Gibbs states, are developed and applied to, e.g., Asonov systems or KAM Theory. Many examples illustrate the ideas and, in addition, a substantial number of interesting topics are treated in the form of guided problems.

The imagination is struck by the substantial conceptual identity between the problems met in the theoretical study of physical phenomena. It is absolutely unexpected and surprising, whether one studies equilibrium statistical me­ chanics, or quantum field theory, or solid state physics, or celestial mechanics, harmonic analysis, elasticity, general relativity or fluid mechanics and chaos in turbulence. So when in 1988 I was made chair of Fluid Mechanics at the Universita La Sapienza, not out of recognition of work I did on the subject (there was none) but, rather, to avoid my teaching mechanics, from which I could have a strong cultural influence on mathematical physics in Rome, I was not excessively worried, although I was clearly in the wrong place. The subject is wide, hence in the last decade I could do nothing else but go through books and libraries looking for something that was within the range of the methods and experiences of my past work. The first great surprise was to realize that the mathematical theory of fluids is in an even more primitive state than I was aware of. Nevertheless it still seems to me that a detailed analysis of the mathematical problems is essential for anyone who wishes to do research into fluids. Therefore, I dedicated (Chap. 3) all the space necessary to a complete exposition of the theories of Leray, of Scheffer and of Caffarelli, Kohn and Nirenberg, taken directly from the original works.

This clear book presents a critical and modern analysis of the conceptual foundations of statistical mechanics as laid down in Boltzmann's works. The author emphasises the relation between microscopic reversibility and macroscopic irreversibility, explaining fundamental concepts in detail.

The apparent contradiction of the results of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam experiment conducted in 1953 and 1954 with the hypothesis that essentially any nonlinearity would lead to a system exhibiting ergodic behaviour has become known as the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam Problem. This volume reviews the current understanding of this paradox without trying to force coherence on differing perspectives on the same problem by various groups or approaches. The contributions comprise studies of one-dimensional chains, descriptions of numerical methods, heuristic theories, addressing the “long standing and controversial problem of distinguishing chaos from noise in signal analysis,” metastability, the relation of the FPU motions with the integrable equations, approaches using methods of perturbation theory and the proof of the applicability of KAM theory in FPU chains with energy very close to a minimum. For the convenience of the reader the original work of FPU is reprinted in an appendix. The order of the contributions reflects the aim of leading the interested but inexperienced reader through gradual understanding, starting from general analysis, and proceeding towards more specialized topics.

Intended for beginners in ergodic theory, this book addresses students as well as researchers in mathematical physics. The main novelty is the systematic treatment of characteristic problems in ergodic theory by a unified method in terms of convergent power series and renormalization group methods, in particular. Basic concepts of ergodicity, like Gibbs states, are developed and applied to, e.g., Asonov systems or KAM Theory. Many examples illustrate the ideas and, in addition, a substantial number of interesting topics are treated in the form of guided problems.

The imagination is struck by the substantial conceptual identity between the problems met in the theoretical study of physical phenomena. It is absolutely unexpected and surprising, whether one studies equilibrium statistical me­ chanics, or quantum field theory, or solid state physics, or celestial mechanics, harmonic analysis, elasticity, general relativity or fluid mechanics and chaos in turbulence. So when in 1988 I was made chair of Fluid Mechanics at the Universita La Sapienza, not out of recognition of work I did on the subject (there was none) but, rather, to avoid my teaching mechanics, from which I could have a strong cultural influence on mathematical physics in Rome, I was not excessively worried, although I was clearly in the wrong place. The subject is wide, hence in the last decade I could do nothing else but go through books and libraries looking for something that was within the range of the methods and experiences of my past work. The first great surprise was to realize that the mathematical theory of fluids is in an even more primitive state than I was aware of. Nevertheless it still seems to me that a detailed analysis of the mathematical problems is essential for anyone who wishes to do research into fluids. Therefore, I dedicated (Chap. 3) all the space necessary to a complete exposition of the theories of Leray, of Scheffer and of Caffarelli, Kohn and Nirenberg, taken directly from the original works.

This clear book presents a critical and modern analysis of the conceptual foundations of statistical mechanics as laid down in Boltzmann's works. The author emphasises the relation between microscopic reversibility and macroscopic irreversibility, explaining fundamental concepts in detail.

The apparent contradiction of the results of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam experiment conducted in 1953 and 1954 with the hypothesis that essentially any nonlinearity would lead to a system exhibiting ergodic behaviour has become known as the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam Problem. This volume reviews the current understanding of this paradox without trying to force coherence on differing perspectives on the same problem by various groups or approaches. The contributions comprise studies of one-dimensional chains, descriptions of numerical methods, heuristic theories, addressing the “long standing and controversial problem of distinguishing chaos from noise in signal analysis,” metastability, the relation of the FPU motions with the integrable equations, approaches using methods of perturbation theory and the proof of the applicability of KAM theory in FPU chains with energy very close to a minimum. For the convenience of the reader the original work of FPU is reprinted in an appendix. The order of the contributions reflects the aim of leading the interested but inexperienced reader through gradual understanding, starting from general analysis, and proceeding towards more specialized topics.

C. Cercignani: A sketch of the theory of the Boltzmann equation.- O.E. Lanford: Qualitative and statistical theory of dissipative systems.- E.H. Lieb: many particle Coulomb systems.- B. Tirozzi: Report on renormalization group.- A. Wehrl: Basic properties of entropy in quantum mechanics.