文档介绍：PREFACE TO THE THIRD RUSSIAN
EDITION
IN rrus edition the has been considerably augmented and revised,
with the assistance of L. P. Pitaevskil throughout.
New sections have been added on the ic properties of gases, the
thermodynamics of a degenerate plasma, liquid crystals, the fluctuation
theory of phase transitions of the second kind, and critical phenomena.
The chapters on solids and on the symmetry of crystals have been substan-
tially enlarged, in particular by a fuller account of the theory of irreducible
representations of space groups as applied to the physics of the crystal
state. The sections on the fluctuation-dissipation theorem have been revised
and extended.
Some sections-have been removed from the book, dealing with the theory
of quantum liquids and the reIated theory of almost ideal degenerate gases.
The physics bf quantum liquids, which was founded and largely developed
by the pioneering experiments of P. L. Kapitza and the theoretical work of
Landau himself, has now e a wide subject whose significance goes far
beyond its original concern, the liquid helium isotopes. An account of the
theory of quantum liquids must now occupy its rightful place in even a
general course of theoretical physics, and the few sections given to it in the
earlier editions of this book are insufficient.
They will appear, in a considerably expanded form, in another volume bf
this course, now being prepared by Pitaevskil and myself, which will also
give a detailed treatment of the Green’s function method and the diagram
technique, which have largely determined the development of statistical
physics in the last 20 years. The transfer of these (and some other) topics
to a separate volume is dictated not only by the fact that their inclusion in
the present one would make it too large and would considerably alter its
whole character. There is also the reason that such topics are essentially
akin to hydrodynamics and macroscopic electrodynamic