More than a graduate text and advanced research guide on condensed matter physics, this volume is useful to plasma physicists and polymer chemists, and their students. It emphasizes applications of statistical mechanics to a variety of systems in condensed matter physics rather than theoretical derivations of the principles of statistical mechanics and techniques.
Isihara addresses a dozen different subjects in separate chapters, each designed to be directly accessible and used independently of previous chapters. Topics include simple liquids, electron systems and correlations, two-dimensional electron systems, quasi one-dimensional systems, hopping and localization, magnetism, superconductivity, liquid helium, liquid crystals, and polymers. Extensive appendixes offer background on molecular distribution functions, which play important roles in the theoretical derivations.