This volume provides a general field-theoretical picture of critical phenomena and stochastic dynamics and helps readers develop a practical skill for calculations. This education on the practical skill sets this book apart: it is the first to give a full technical introduction to the field. Both general ideas and ...hard... calculations are presented here. This text can also serve as an ideal reference on applications of Quantum Field Theory (QFT). The author gives a comprehensive treatment of the subject, but in a manner easily understood by anyone familiar with the basic of statistical...

Providing a systematic introduction to the techniques which are fundamental to quantum field theory, this book pays special attention to the use of these techniques in a wide variety of areas, including ordinary quantum mechanics, quantum mechanics in the second-quantized formulation, relativistic quantum field theory, Euclidean field theory, quantum statistics at finite temperature, and the classical statistics of nonideal gas and spin systems. The extended chapter on variational methods and functional Legendre transformations contains completely original material.