A. S. Kompaneyets – A Course Of Theoretical Physics (Vols. 1 and 2)

Volume 1 of this course of theoretical physics deals with the fundamental laws of physics. The text lucidly presents for students and workers in theoretical physics the fundamental principles underlying the findings of experimental physics. It gives a unified presentation of classical mechanics, electrodynamics, and quantum mechanics and provides an excellent foundation for the study of more advanced topics in atomic, molecular, and solid-state physics. Fundamental laws can be read by students who have had courses in introductory physics, electricity, and magnetism.

Volume 2 of this course of theoretical physics deals with statistical laws, the basic structure remains essentially the same. The author has selected those topics he felt to be of general interest. The book includes, for instance, sections on fluctuations, Gibbs statistics, detonation waves, ferromagnetism, and the theory of semiconductors. Statistical laws can be read by a student who has had courses in classical mechanics, electrodynamics, and quantum mechanics. Numerous exercises combine with the masterly coverage of the subject to make statistical laws an essential text for university and college students.

 

Alexander S. Kompaneyets (1914-1974)
Professor Alexander Solomonovich Kompaneyets was a leading Soviet theoretical physicist from 1946 Until his untimely death he worked at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, contributing, among other things, to the development of nuclear energy in the Soviet Union in all its aspects.

 

The book was translated from the Russian by V. Talmy and was published by Mir in 1978.

You can get the Volume 1 here and here

You can get the Volume 2 here and here

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CONTENTS

Volume 1

Preface — 5

PART I. MECHANICS

  • General Remarks — 9
  • Lagrange Equations — 13
  • Examples of Constructing the Lagrange Equations — 27
  • Conservation Laws — 36
  • Motion in a Central Field — 49
  • Collision of Particles — 58
  • Small Oscillations — 70
  • Noninertial Frames of Reference — 81
  • Dynamics of Rigid Bodies — 89
  • Hamilton’s Equations and the Hamilton–Jacobi Equation — 108
  • PART II. ELECTRODYNAMICS

  • Vector Analysis — 125
  • Maxwell’s Equations — 142
  • Einstein’s Relativity Principle — 157
  • Relativistic Mechanics — 177
  • Action of an Electromagnetic Field — 194
  • Electrostatics of Point Charges — 208
  • Magnetostatics of Point Charges — 219
  • Plane Electromagnetic Waves — 229
  • Transmission of Signals. Almost Plane Waves — 239
  • The Emission of Electromagnetic Waves — 248
  • PART III. QUANTUM MECHANICS

  • The Inadequacy of Classical Mechanics. The Analogy Between Classical Mechanics and Geometrical Optics — 269
  • Electron Diffraction — 278
  • The Wave Equation — 285
  • Operators in Quantum Mechanics — 293
  • Expansions in Wave Functions — 306
  • Transformation of Independent Variables — 318
  • Operators in Matrix Representation — 331
  • Some Problems in Coordinate Representation — 342
  • Motion in a Central Potential — 365
  • Electron Spin — 383
  • The Quasi-Classical Approximation — 401
  • Perturbation Theory — 424
  • Many-Electron Systems. The Atom — 436
  • Diatomic Molecules — 480
  • The Quantum Theory of Scattering — 491
  • The Quantum Theory of Radiation — 508
  • The Dirac Equation — 528
  • Supplementary Exercises — 547

    Index — 557

    Volume 2

    Preface — 5

    PART I. STATISTICAL PHYSICS

  • Equilibrium Distribution of Molecules in Ideal Gas — 9
  • Boltzmann Statistics: Translational Motion of Molecules; Gas in an External Field — 27
  • Boltzmann Statistics: Vibrational and Rotational Molecular Motion — 41
  • Applications of Statistics to Electromagnetic Fields in Vacuum and to Crystalline Bodies — 51
  • The Bose Distribution — 69
  • The Fermi Distribution — 73
  • Gibbs Statistics — 82
  • Thermodynamic Quantities — 95
  • The Thermodynamic Properties of Ideal Gas in Boltzmann Statistics — 120
  • Fluctuations — 132
  • Phase Equilibria — 143
  • Dilute Solutions — 158
  • Chemical Equilibria — 164
  • Surface Phenomena — 170
  • PART II. HYDRODYNAMICS AND GAS DYNAMICS

  • The General Equations of Hydrodynamics — 176
  • Some Problems on the Motion of an Ideal Fluid — 192
  • Mechanics of a Viscous Incompressible Fluid — 201
  • Motion of Bodies in an Incompressible Fluid — 213
  • Superfluidity — 226
  • One-Dimensional Steady Flow of a Compressible Gas — 236
  • Quasi-One-Dimensional Flow of a Gas — 241
  • Characteristics of One-Dimensional Nonsteady Isentropic Flow — 246
  • Simple Waves — 251
  • One-Dimensional Nonsteady Isentropic Flow: Interaction of Simple Waves — 258
  • Shock Waves — 267
  • Applications of the Theory of Shock Waves — 277
  • Detonation Waves — 284
  • PART III. ELECTRODYNAMICS OF CONTINUOUS MEDIA

  • General Equations — 290
  • Electrostatics of Conductors — 299
  • Electrostatics of Dielectrics — 312
  • Direct Current — 321
  • Magnetic Properties of Nonferromagnetic Media — 332
  • Ferromagnetism — 342
  • The Magnetic Field of Direct Current — 352
  • Quasi-Stationary Currents — 363
  • Rapidly Variable Fields — 376
  • Theory of Dispersion — 386
  • Electromagnetic Waves — 397
  • Some Applications of the Electrodynamics of Rapidly Variable Fields — 411
  • PART IV. PHYSICAL KINETICS

  • General Relationships — 423
  • The Transport Equation — 440
  • Electrons in Crystals — 465
  • Semiconductors and Metals — 480
  • Index — 502

    #classicalMechanics #electrodynamics #electrodynamicsOfContinuousMedia #fundamentalLaws #gasDynamics #hydrodynamics #mirPublishers #mirtitles #physicalKinetics #physics #quantumMechanics #statisticalLaws #statisticalPhysics #theoretical

    From the lab of Roger Guimerà and Marta Sales Pardo:

    "CoCoGraph, a collaborative and constrained graph diffusion model capable of generating molecules that are guaranteed to be chemically valid."

    "A collaborative constrained graph diffusion model for the generation of realistic synthetic molecules", Ruiz-Botella et al. 2026
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-026-01229-5.epdf

    Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.16365

    #StatisticalPhysics

    A collaborative constrained graph diffusion model for the generation of realistic synthetic molecules | Nature Machine Intelligence

    Developing new molecular compounds is crucial to address pressing challenges, from health to environmental sustainability. However, exploring the molecular space to discover new molecules is difficult owing to the vastness of the space. Here we introduce CoCoGraph, a collaborative and constrained graph diffusion model capable of generating molecules that are guaranteed to be chemically valid. Thanks to the constraints built into the model and to the collaborative mechanism, CoCoGraph outperforms state-of-the-art approaches on standard benchmarks while being more efficient. Analysis of 36 chemical properties also demonstrates that CoCoGraph generates molecules with distributions more closely matching real molecules than current models. To illustrate the potential of the model, we created a database of 8.2 million synthetically generated molecules, show how this database and CoCoGraph could be used for molecular discovery and conduct a Turing-like test with organic chemistry experts to further assess the plausibility of the generated molecules, and the potential biases and limitations of CoCoGraph. The collaborative constrained graph diffusion model CoCoGraph generates novel molecules that are guaranteed to be valid and more realistic than state-of-the-art outputs, while achieving faster performance with up to an order of magnitude fewer parameters.

    The #paperOfTheDay is a classic of #thermodynamics : "Equation of state in the Neighborhood of the critical point" from 1965. Here, Benjamin Widom introduces what is now known as "Widom scaling".
    Generically, the properties of a fluid might depend on parameters, such as temperature or density, through power laws. There are certain critical points in the phase space, i.e. certain temperatures, densities, etc., where the behaviour of the fluid changes qualitatively. The observation is that close to the critical point, the exponents of the various power laws have different numerical values than what one would expect classically. For example, the specific heat diverges at a power law, but the exponent of divergence is not what one would expect from the conventional equation of state.
    Widom's paper now makes a specific conjecture: Near a critical point, the equation of state should be altered by introducing an arbitrary function of density of temperature, however, this function is assumed to be homogeneous. That is if x is temperature and y is density, it is a function of the form e.g. x^c * f(y/x), where f is an arbitrary function of y/x, and c is a constant. It turns out that almost all experimental observations can be described from this conjecture without knowing the functional form of f. The scaling exponent c alone is sufficient to give rise to the non-classical power laws and the relations between them.
    This paper is significant because it is an early (and purely heuristic) version of universality: The behaviour of systems in #statisticalPhysics at the critical point is largely determined from structural properties, independently of concrete details.
    https://pubs.aip.org/aip/jcp/article-abstract/43/11/3898/210917/Equation-of-State-in-the-Neighborhood-of-the?redirectedFrom=fulltext

    What are your plans for the second week of July? The correct answer is: to participate in the Sigma Phi Conference in Chania! From 6 July to 10 July, a huge event covering all topics of interest in Statistical Physics. And, there will be also a special workshop on Mathematical Ideas across Multiple Scales in Networks (or MAIMUN, for short), organized by yours truly and with an impressive lineup of speakers, including Ginestra Bianconi, Stefano Boccaletti, Sebastian Contreras, Piero De Lellis, Tiziana Di Matteo, Fakhteh Ghanbarnejad, Sarika Jalan, José Mendes, Osnat Mokryn and Punit Parmananda!

    Please boost far and wide, and spread the news to students, colleagues, and anyone who may be interested!

    http://www.sigmaphi.polito.it/index.php

    #statisticalphysics #physics #mathematics #science #disorder #criticality #fluids #networks #graphs #biophysics #economics #sociology #complexity

    Topics and Format

    I have a steam powered tea pot let me explain

    It's one of those translucent plastic cylinders molded with a tight fitting lid that has two spouts: one with a square opening and another with a grate that doesn't filter small things like broken leaf tea.

    Hot tea in this tea pot contains water with a high vapor pressure, one that is high enough to evaporate enough water to create a pressure large enough to lift the lid. The pressure inside and out was atmospheric pressure until water began evaporating from the tea I put in the tea pot.

    The lid doesn't lift very far, but the bearing surface is tea, so the friction is low enough for the lid to move up.

    Or conversely there is a small passage, albeit larger than all the rest, through which I can hear bubbles popping as the evaporated water leaves the tea pot. What was initially a flat interface between the membrane of tea and the external atmosphere was pushed out by this pressure difference. The push was the water vapor and air pushing against the surface tension of the tea membrane. It takes force to deform a fluid membrane.

    So my steam powered tea pot is running on the heat energy in the hot tea inside it. The work it is doing could be lifting the lid but it surely is popping water bubbles that I can hear.

    #statisticalphysics

    🤣 Oh, you thought you'd be defying gravity by throwing statistical physics into JavaScript? 🚀 Spoiler alert: no amounts of buzzwords or IDEs will magically transform your code into something comprehensible. Next time, just stick to IMDB stalking for a real challenge! 🙄
    https://christopherkrapu.com/blog/2025/antigravity-stat-mech/ #defyinggravity #JavaScript #statisticalphysics #codinghumor #IMDBstalking #HackerNews #ngated
    Using Antigravity for Statistical Physics in JS | Christopher Krapu

    Testing Google's new IDE and top model on a ferromagnetic simulation

    Using Antigravity for Statistical Physics in JS | Christopher Krapu

    Testing Google's new IDE and top model on a ferromagnetic simulation

    Flatiron Research Fellow, Statistical Biophysics, Center for Computational Biology

    Post a job in 3min, or find thousands of job offers like this one at jobRxiv!

    jobRxiv
    Flatiron Research Fellow, Statistical Biophysics, Center for Computational Biology

    Post a job in 3min, or find thousands of job offers like this one at jobRxiv!

    jobRxiv

    Glad to be granted a patent on prediction & control of blowout in combustion systems by United States Patent and Trademark Office. Our invention predicts the exact blowout time significantly earlier using a log periodic power law & performs control action to prevent the blowout.

    #USPatents #IntellectualProperty #Blowout #IITMadras #Aviation #Innovation #JetEngine #STEM #Aerospace #Statisticalphysics #powerlaw #Complexsystems #Sustainability #scaleinvariance #Logperiodicity #Combustion