Boulevard of broken symmetries

by Adriaan M. J. Schakel

"This textbook covers the main topics in contemporary condensed muller physics in a modern and unified way, using quantum field theory in the functional integral approach. The book highlights symmetry aspects in acknowledging that much of the collective behaviors of condensed matter at law temperatures emerge above a nontrivial ground state, which spontaneously breaks the symmetry." "The emphasis is on effective field theories which provide an efficient and powerful description that is valid at long wavelengths and law frequencies. In conjunction with this, the modern approach towards renormalization is taken, whereby a wave number cutoff is introduced to set a scale beyond which the microscopic model under consideration ceases to be valid."--Jacket.