Contemporary Kinetic Theory of Matter

Kinetic theory provides a microscopic description of many observable, macroscopic processes and has a wide range of important applications in physics, astronomy, chemistry, and engineering. This powerful, theoretical framework allows a quantitative treatment of many non-equilibrium phenomena such as transport processes in classical and quantum fluids. This book describes in detail the Boltzmann equation theory, obtained in both traditional and modern ways. Applications and generalizations describing non-equilibrium processes in a variety of systems are also covered, including dilute and moderately dense gases, particles in random media, hard sphere crystals, condensed Bose-Einstein gases, and granular materials. Fluctuation phenomena in non-equilibrium fluids, and related non-analyticities in the hydrodynamic equations are also discussed in some detail. A thorough examination of many topics concerning time dependent phenomena in material systems, this book describes both current knowledge as well as future directions of the field.

1. Introduction; 2. The Boltzmann equation 1: Fundamentals; 3. The Boltzmann equation 2: Fluid dynamics; 4. Dilute gas mixtures; 5. The dilute Lorentz gas; 6. Basic tools; 7. Enskog theory: Dense hard sphere systems; 8. The Boltzmann-Langevin equation; 9. Granular gases; 10. Quantum gases; 11. Cluster expansions; 12. Divergences and resummations; 13. Long time tails; 14. Non-equilibrium steady states; 15. What's next; Bibliography; Index.

Jay Robert Dorfman is Emeritus Professor at the University of Maryland. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a recipient of the Chancellor's Medal for distinguished contributions to the University of Maryland. He is also the author of two books: A Course in Statistical Thermodynamics with Joseph Kestin, and An Introduction to Chaos in Non-equilibrium Statistical Mechanics (Cambridge University Press).
Henk van Beijeren is Emeritus Professor at Utrecht University and former Scientific Director of The Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment. He is a recipient of the Humboldt-Forschungs award.
Theodore Ross Kirkpatrick is Research Professor at the University of Maryland and a fellow of the American Physical Society. He has co-authored over 220 research papers in related areas of research.