William Coffey
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 706
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This volume is the second edition of the first-ever elementary book on the Langevin equation method for the solution of problems involving the Brownian motion in a potential, with emphasis on modern applications in the natural sciences, electrical engineering and so on. It has been substantially enlarged to cover in a succinct manner a number of new topics, such as anomalous diffusion, continuous time random walks, stochastic resonance etc, which are of major current interest in view of the large number of disparate physical systems exhibiting these phenomena. The book has been written in such a way that all the material should be accessible to an advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate student. It draws together, in a coherent fashion, a variety of results which have hitherto been available only in the form of research papers or scattered review articles. Contents: Historical Background and Introductory Concepts; Langevin Equations and Methods of Solution; Brownian Motion of a Free Particle and a Harmonic Oscillator; Two-Dimensional Rotational Brownian Motion in N -Fold Cosine Potentials; Brownian Motion in a Tilted Cosine Potential: Application to the Josephson Tunnelling Junction; Translational Brownian Motion in a Double-Well Potential; Three-Dimensional Rotational Brownian Motion in an External Potential: Application to the Theory of Dielectric and Magnetic Relaxation; Rotational Brownian Motion in Axially Symmetric Potentials: Matrix Continued Fraction Solutions; Rotational Brownian Motion in Non-Axially Symmetric Potentials; Inertial Langevin Equations: Application to Orientational Relaxation in Liquids; Anomalous Diffusion. Readership: Advanced undergraduates, graduate students, academics and researchers in statistical physics, condensed matter physics and magnetism, the physics of fluids, theoretical chemistry and applied mathematics.