Fluctuations And Stochastic Phenomena In Condensed Matter: Proceedings Of The Sitges Conference On Statistical Mechanics, Sitges, Barcelona/spain, May 26-30, 1986 (lecture Notes In Physics)

A review is presented of recent work dealing ~ith dissipaLive dynamical systems weakly perturbed by noise. A free-energy like macroscopic nonequilibrium potential is defined for such systems which determines the stability and mean life-times of the systems' attractors. General properties of the nonequilibrium potential are discussed along with selected applications such as noise in Josephson junctions, in systems near bifurcation points of cadimension two~ and in systems described by the strange attractor of the Lorenz model. Macroscopic potentials, bifurcations and noise in dissipative systems....Pages 1-34 Dynamics of topological defects in first order phase transitions....Pages 35-54 An introduction to pattern formation in nonequilibrium systems....Pages 55-92 The statistical mechanics of polymer melts and glasses....Pages 93-119 On the replica symmetric Ising spin glasses....Pages 121-144 Conformal invariance and finite size effects in critical two dimensional statistical models....Pages 145-174 Generalized non linear б - Model and effective landau theory for disordered interacting electron systems....Pages 175-198 Relationship between d-dimensional models with langevin dynamics, associated quantum systems and (D+1)-dimensional classical and static models....Pages 199-225 Phase transitions and stationary nonequilibrium states....Pages 227-257 Quantum mechanical chaos criteria for a kicked top....Pages 259-276 Short range spin glasses at low temperatures....Pages 277-286 Diffusion in fully developed turbulence a random walk on a fractal structure....Pages 287-314 Multifractal wavefunction at the localization threshold....Pages 315-332 Effects of screening in liquid crystal polymers....Pages 333-350 Localization, quantum interference and transport in disordered solids....Pages 351-375 On the computational complexity of composite systems....Pages 377-388 Dissipative quantum tunneling....Pages 389-410