Yakov G. Sinai

The 20 papers contained in this volume span the areas of mathematical physics, dynamical systems, and probability. Yakov Sinai is one of the most important and influential mathematicians of our time, having won the Boltzmann Medal (1986), the Dirac Medal (1992), Dannie Heinemann Prize for Mathematical Physics (1989), Nemmers Prize (2002), and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics (1997). He is well-known as both a mathematician and a physicist, with numerous theorems and proofs bearing his name in both fields, and this book should be of interest to researchers from all fields of the physical sciences.This volume follows Volume I.From the reviews:"The second volume covers statistical mechanics and related topics. It contains 22 papers divided into four groups: Part I: Probability Theory; Part II: Statistical Mechanics; Part III: Mathematical Physics; Part IV: Mathematical Fluid Dynamics. The volume represents Sinai’s work on the above topics spanning almost 40 years:the earliest paper is dated 1972, and the latest 2008. The choice of papers was made by Sinai himself, and he provides commentary for each one. The reader will ?nd a wealth of information and ideas that can still ignite inspiration and motivate students as well as senior researchers. The reader will also have a touch of Sinai’s personality, his taste, enthusiasm, and optimism, which are just as invaluable as his mathematical results." (Nikolai Chernov, Mathematical Reviews 2012e)

From the reviews:“The first volume is devoted to ergodic theory and dynamical systems. It contains 19 papers divided into four groups … . The reader will find a wealth of information and ideas that can still ignite inspiration and motivate students as well as senior researchers. The reader will also have a touch of Sinai’s personality, his taste, enthusiasm, and optimism, which are just as invaluable as his mathematical results.” (Nikolai Chernov, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2012 e)

The 20 papers contained in this volume span the areas of mathematical physics, dynamical systems, and probability. Yakov Sinai is one of the most important and influential mathematicians of our time, having won the Boltzmann Medal (1986), the Dirac Medal (1992), Dannie Heinemann Prize for Mathematical Physics (1989), Nemmers Prize (2002), and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics (1997). He is well-known as both a mathematician and a physicist, with numerous theorems and proofs bearing his name in both fields, and this book should be of interest to researchers from all fields of the physical sciences.This volume follows Volume I.From the reviews:"The second volume covers statistical mechanics and related topics. It contains 22 papers divided into four groups: Part I: Probability Theory; Part II: Statistical Mechanics; Part III: Mathematical Physics; Part IV: Mathematical Fluid Dynamics. The volume represents Sinai’s work on the above topics spanning almost 40 years:the earliest paper is dated 1972, and the latest 2008. The choice of papers was made by Sinai himself, and he provides commentary for each one. The reader will ?nd a wealth of information and ideas that can still ignite inspiration and motivate students as well as senior researchers. The reader will also have a touch of Sinai’s personality, his taste, enthusiasm, and optimism, which are just as invaluable as his mathematical results." (Nikolai Chernov, Mathematical Reviews 2012e)

From the reviews:“The first volume is devoted to ergodic theory and dynamical systems. It contains 19 papers divided into four groups … . The reader will find a wealth of information and ideas that can still ignite inspiration and motivate students as well as senior researchers. The reader will also have a touch of Sinai’s personality, his taste, enthusiasm, and optimism, which are just as invaluable as his mathematical results.” (Nikolai Chernov, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2012 e)

Of the three lecture courses making up the CIME summer school on Fluid Dynamics at Cetraro in 2005 reflected in this volume, the first, due to Sergio Albeverio describes deterministic and stochastic models of hydrodynamics. In the second course, Franco Flandoli starts from 3D Navier-Stokes equations and ends with turbulence. Finally, Yakov Sinai, in the 3rd course, describes some rigorous mathematical results for multidimensional Navier-Stokes systems and some recent results on the one-dimensional Burgers equation with random forcing.

A one-year course in probability theory and the theory of random processes, taught at Princeton University to undergraduate and graduate students, forms the core of the content of this book It is structured in two parts: the first part providing a detailed discussion of Lebesgue integration, Markov chains, random walks, laws of large numbers, limit theorems, and their relation to Renormalization Group theory. The second part includes the theory of stationary random processes, martingales, generalized random processes, Brownian motion, stochastic integrals, and stochastic differential equations. One section is devoted to the theory of Gibbs random fields. This material is essential to many undergraduate and graduate courses. The book can also serve as a reference for scientists using modern probability theory in their research.

Our DMV Seminar on 'Classical Nonintegrability, Quantum Chaos' intended to introduce students and beginning researchers to the techniques applied in nonin­ tegrable classical and quantum dynamics. Several of these lectures are collected in this volume. The basic phenomenon of nonlinear dynamics is mixing in phase space, lead­ ing to a positive dynamical entropy and a loss of information about the initial state. The nonlinear motion in phase space gives rise to a linear action on phase space functions which in the case of iterated maps is given by a so-called transfer operator. Good mixing rates lead to a spectral gap for this operator. Similar to the use made of the Riemann zeta function in the investigation of the prime numbers, dynamical zeta functions are now being applied in nonlinear dynamics. In Chapter 2 V. Baladi first introduces dynamical zeta functions and transfer operators, illustrating and motivating these notions with a simple one-dimensional dynamical system. Then she presents a commented list of useful references, helping the newcomer to enter smoothly into this fast-developing field of research. Chapter 3 on irregular scattering and Chapter 4 on quantum chaos by A. Knauf deal with solutions of the Hamilton and the Schr6dinger equation. Scatter­ ing by a potential force tends to be irregular if three or more scattering centres are present, and a typical phenomenon is the occurrence of a Cantor set of bounded orbits. The presence of this set influences those scattering orbits which come close.