An important contributor to our current understanding of critical phenomena, Ma introduces the beginner--especially the graduate student with no previous knowledge of the subject-to fundamental theoretical concepts such as mean field theory, the scaling hypothesis, and the renormalization group. He then goes on to apply the renormalization group to selected problems, with emphasis on the underlying physics and the basic assumptions involved.

Shang-keng Ma

INTRODUCTION, MODELS AND BASIC CONCEPTS, The Gaussian Approximation, The Scaling Hypothesis, The Renormalisation Group, Fixed points and Exponents, The Gaussian Fixed Point and Fixed Points in 4-e dimensions, Renormalisation Groups in Selected Models, Perturbation Expansions, The Effect of Random Impurities and miscellaneous topics, Introduction to Dynamics, The Renormalisation Groups in Dynamics, Simple Dynamics Models, Perturbation Expansion in Dynamics.