This important book explains how the technique of Witten Laplacians may be useful in statistical mechanics. It considers the problem of analyzing the decay of correlations, after presenting its origin in statistical mechanics. In addition, it compares the Witten Laplacian approach with other techniques, such as the transfer matrix approach and its semiclassical analysis. The author concludes by providing a complete proof of the uniform Log-Sobolev inequality.

This introduction to semi-classical analysis is an extension of a course given by the author at the University of Nankai. It presents for some of the standard cases presented in quantum mechanics books a rigorous study of the tunneling effect, as an introduction to recent research work. The book may be read by a graduate student familiar with the classic book of Reed-Simon, and for some chapters basic notions in differential geometry. The mathematician will find here a nice application of PDE techniques and the physicist will discover the precise link between approximate solutions (B.K.W....

In the past decade, the mathematics of superconductivity has been the subject of intense study. This book examines in detail the nonlinear Ginzburg-Landau (GL) functional, the model most commonly used. Specifically, cases in the presence of a strong magnetic field and with a sufficiently large GL parameter kappa are covered.

Key topics and features:

*Provides a concrete introduction to techniques in spectral theory and PDEs

*Offers a complete analysis of the two-dimensional GL-functional with large kappa in the presence of a magnetic field

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