Notebooks

Statistical Mechanics: Books Recommendations

Recommended reading

Reif, F. (2009). Fundamentals of statistical and thermal physics. Waveland Press.
I disliked this book as a student, but after teaching stat mech twice, I’ve grown to like it—my patience for slightly verbose explanations has clearly increased.
Huang, K. (1987). Statistical mechanics (2nd ed). Wiley.
Broad yet concise. The chapter on the general properties of the partition function has a nice discussion on the zeroes of the partition function and connections to phase transition.
Toda, M., Kubo, R., & Saitô, N. (1992). Statistical Physics I: Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics (Vol. 30). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Kubo, R., Toda, M., & Hashitsume, N. (1991). Statistical Physics II (Vol. 31). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Ryogo Kubo's books are some of the most didactic books I've ever read. Strongly recommended.
Feynman, R. (1998). Statistical Mechanics: A Set Of Lectures. Taylor & Francis.
Good book with a spectacular beginning where he puts the partition function in the place it deserves.
Kleinert, H., & Schulte-frohlinde, V. (2001). Critical Properties Of $\phi^4$-Theories. World Scientific.
If you're trying to calculate higher-order Feynman diagrams for scalar field theories, Kleinert and Schulte-Frohlinde's book is the best reference.
Kardar, M. (2007). Statistical Physics of Fields (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press.
My favorite book regarding field-theoretic formulation of critical phenomena. The chapters on the perturbative renormalization group of $\phi^4$ theories are superb.
Nishimori, H., & Ortiz, G. (2011). Elements of phase transitions and critical phenomena. Oxford University Press.
It has a neat discussion on mean field theories (particularly $\phi^6$ theory related to tricritical points).
Swendsen, R. H. (2019). An Introduction to Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
A thorough book and—unusually—starts with detailed discussions on entropy. The book uses slightly unwieldy, verbose notations, but I think explicit notations is a feature here, not a problem.
Baxter, R. J. (2008). Exactly Solved Models in Statistical Mechanics. Dover Publications.
The best resource for exactly solvable models.
Allen, M. P., & Tildesley, D. J. (2017). Computer simulation of liquids (Second edition). Oxford University Press.
Clean, accessible discussions on numerical approaches in statistical mechanics. For instance, check the discussion on how ensembles are used in molecular dynamics simulations.
Chandler, D. (1987). Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics. OUP USA.
Concise, but so well-written! Check, for example, the first chapter on thermodynamics (and especially Legendre transforms).
Tolman, R. C. (1979). The principles of statistical mechanics. Dover Publications.
I've only had a look at this book, but I'm thoroughly impressed by its depth.
Dalvit, D. A. R., Frastai, J., & Lawrie, I. D. (1999). Problems on statistical mechanics. Institute of Physics.
Excellent book on problems, more so because it comes with solutions. Check it if you want to know, for example, under which conditions bosons with a $p^s$ dispersion relation in $d$-dimensions will form a condensate.
Krapivsky, P. L., Redner, S., & Ben-Naim, E. (2010). A Kinetic View of Statistical Physics (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press.
The chapters on aggregation, fragmentation, and adsorption are particularly good.
Balakrishnan, V. (2021). Elements of Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics. Springer International Publishing.
Thorough, excellent treatment of non-equilibrium stat mech.

To read

Ambegaokar, V. (1996). Reasoning about luck: Probability and its uses in physics. Cambridge University Press. (Archive)

Courses on YouTube

Non-equilibrium Statistical Mechanics by V. S. Balakrishnan.
An excellent introductory lectures on statistical mechanics by John Preskill