Introduction to Path - Integral Methods in Physics and Polymer Science

This monograph distills material prepared by the author for class lectures, conferences and research seminars. It fills in a much-felt gap between the older and original work by Feynman and Hibbs and the more recent and advanced volume by Schulman.After presenting an elementary account on the Wiener path integral as applied to Brownian motion, the author progresses on to the statistics of polymers and polymer entanglements. The next three chapters provide an introduction to quantum statistical physics with emphasis on the conceptual understanding of many-variable systems. A chapter on the renormalization group provides material for starting on research work. The final chapter contains an over view of the role of path integrals in recent developments in physics. A good bibliography is provided for each chapter.