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An introductory account of the theory of phase transitions and critical phenomena, this book reflects lectures given by the authors to graduate students at their departments and is thus classroom-tested to help beginners enter the field. Problem sets are included, with solutions given at the end of the book.

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As an introductory account of the theory of phase transitions and critical phenomena, this book reflects lectures given by the authors to graduate students at their departments and is thus classroom-tested to help beginners enter the field. Most parts are written as self-contained units and every new concept or calculation is explained in detail without assuming prior knowledge of the subject. The book significantly enhances and revises a Japanese version which is a
bestseller in the Japenese market and is considered a standard textbook in the field. It contains new pedagogical presentations of field theory methods, including a chapter on conformal field theory, and various modern developments hard to find in a single textbook on phase transitions. Exercises
are presented as the topics develop, with solutions found at the end of the book, making the usefil for self-teaching, as well as for classroom learning.

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´The strengths of this book are the quality and experience of Nishimori and Ortiz as researchers and teachers. They know well how to explain physical theories and formalisms, and their writings have a very low threshold for the interested and mathematically inclined reader. The book has a very nice selection of topics, ranging from the basics in the theory of classical spin systems, via renormalization group theory and conformal field theory, to duality arguments and disordered systems. Above all, the authors have succeeded brilliantly in conveying the elegance of this particular field of mathematical physics.´ Anthony Coolen, King´s College London, UK

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After spending three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie-Mellon University and Rutgers University in the US, Hidetoshi Nishimori returned to Japan, first as a research associate at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is now a professor of physics at the same Institute. He received the Nishina Memorial Prize in 2006 for his work on spin glasses. He is a Fellow of Institute of Physics.

After receiving his PhD in Theoretical Physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Gerardo Oritz continued his career in the US, first as a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and then as an Oppenheimer fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he stayed as a permanent staff member until 2006. He is currently Professor of Physics at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.

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