This book shows how the concept of geometrical frustration can be used to elucidate the structure and properties of nonperiodic materials such as metallic glasses, quasicrystals, amorphous semiconductors and complex liquid crystals. Examples and idealized models introduce geometric frustration, illustrating how it can be used to identify ordered and defective regions in real materials. The book goes on to show how these principles can also be used to model physical properties of materials, in particular specific volume, melting, the structure factor and the glass transition. Final chapters...

This book shows how the concept of geometrical frustration can be used to elucidate the structure and properties of nonperiodic materials such as metallic glasses, quasicrystals, amorphous semiconductors and complex liquid crystals. Examples and idealized models introduce geometric frustration, illustrating how it can be used to identify ordered and defective regions in real materials. The book goes on to show how these principles can also be used to model physical properties of materials, in particular specific volume, melting, the structure factor and the glass transition. Final chapters...

This text discusses the physical principles of how and why crystals grow. It introduces the fundamental properties of crystal surfaces at equilibrium, and describes simple models and basic concepts of crystal growth including diffusion, thermal smoothing of a surface, and applications to semiconductors. It also covers more complex topics such as kinetic roughness, growth instabilities, and elastic effects, as well as the crucial contributions of crystal growth in electronics during this century. The book focuses on growth using molecular beam epitaxy. Throughout, the emphasis is on the role...

This text discusses the physical principles of how and why crystals grow. It introduces the fundamental properties of crystal surfaces at equilibrium, and describes simple models and basic concepts of crystal growth including diffusion, thermal smoothing of a surface, and applications to semiconductors. It also covers more complex topics such as kinetic roughness, growth instabilities, and elastic effects, as well as the crucial contributions of crystal growth in electronics during this century. The book focuses on growth using molecular beam epitaxy. Throughout, the emphasis is on the role...

This book provides an introduction to nonequilibrium statistical physics via lattice models. Beginning with an introduction to the basic driven lattice gas, the early chapters discuss the relevance of this lattice model to certain natural phenomena, examining simulation results in detail. Later chapters discuss absorbing-state transitions, and examine a variety of systems subject to dynamic disorder. The book discusses the effects of multiparticle rules, nonunique absorbing-states and conservation laws, as well as the use of methods such as mean-field theory, Monte Carlo simulation and the...

This text describes the statistical mechanics of classical spin systems with quenched disorder. The first part covers the physics of spin-glass states using results obtained within the framework of the mean field theory of spin glasses. The second part is devoted to the theory of critical phenomena in the presence of weak quenched disorder. This includes a systematic derivation of the traditional renormalization group theory. In the third part Dotsenko describes other types of disordered systems, relating them to new results at the frontiers of modern research. The book is suitable for...