Product Description

This book surveys and explains the mathematical methods and techniques used in the study of lattice models of polymers in solvents. The techniques include the self-avoiding walk and its related models including animal and tree graphs, surfaces and vesicles. The important feature in all these models in the contribution of conformational degrees of freedom to the free energy, and this leads on to the idea of a tricritical point. The book explores the theory of tricriticality showing how it can be used to interpret the limiting free energy and generating functions. Density function and pattern theorems are also discusssed and finally these ideas are applied to models of collapsing and adsorbing walks, to composite polygons and crumpling surfaces.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1775141 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 379 pages

Review
"Modeling macromolecules is the motivation for this book, with a focus on asymptotic properties of linear polymers. . . . This book is well organized; it is encyclopedic on the one hand, presenting material from 374 references in great detail, but grouping this material on the other hand around a common thread, the limiting free energy of the model. . . . [The book] is reasonably self-contained and clearly written; the appendices on subadditive functions, convex functions, asymptotics for q-factorials, and percolation are very valuable." -- Mathematical Reviews

About the Author
E J Janse van Rensburg Department of Mathematics and Statistics York University, Toronto Ontario, CANADA M3J 1P3 Tel. 736-2100 (X33837) Fax. 736-5516 Email: rensburg@mathstat.yorku.ca Nationality: South African Date of birth: 29 November 1959