Lattice Models of Polymers (Cambridge Lecture Notes in Physics)

This is a comprehensive introduction to lattice models of polymers, an important topic both in the theory of critical phenomena and the modeling of polymers. The first two chapters introduce the basic theory of random, directed and self-avoiding walks. The book then goes on to develop and expand this theory to explore the self-avoiding walk in both two and three dimensions. Following chapters describe polymers near a surface, dense polymers, self interacting polymers and branched polymers. The book closes with discussions of some geometrical and topological properties of polymers, and of self-avoiding surfaces on a lattice. The volume combines results from rigorous analytical and numerical work to give a coherent picture of the properties of lattice models of polymers. This book will be valuable for graduate students and researchers working in statistical mechanics, theoretical physics and polymer physics. It will also be of interest to those working in applied mathematics and theoretical chemistry.