Abstract:
These lectures contain a discussion of the fundamental concepts of statistical physics, such as the Gibbs distribution, correlation functions, magnitudes in thermodynamics, etc. Besides concepts that are familiar to physicists, the lectures introduce some new theorems and developments of a more mathematical character, namely, the limiting Gibbs distribution, van Hove's theorem, and equations for limiting correlation functions in lattice systems.
The lecture on phase transitions of the first kind is the hub of the article; it contains the greater part of the known mathematical results concerning phase transitions of the first kind in lattice systems.
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