Exactly Solvable Models in Statistical Physics

Over the past fifteen years, the course on ’Exactly Solvable Models in Statistical Physics’ has become an indispensable ground of the study programme ’Theoretical Physics’ at Faculty of Science of Pavol Jozef ˇSaf´arik University in Koˇsice. At first, the course based on the first edition of this textbook was intended for undergraduate students only, however, I have later prepared follow-up course taught at a postgraduate level on demand of several ambitious students who wished to continue in studying this exciting research field. It is already more than decade when our students enrolled in the study programme ’Theoretical Physics’ graduate from ’Introduction to Exactly Solvable Models in Statistical Physics’ at a master level and ’Exactly Solvable Models in Statistical Physics’ at a postgraduate level. Of course, it was necessary somehow to rearrange topics for the courses of undergraduate and postgraduate students. More specifically, a few more challenging topics concerned with exact solutions of 2D Ising model (chapter 3) were moved to a more advanced course intended for the postgraduate students, while an introductory course intended for the undergraduate students was contrarily supplemented with a few new topics requiring the second edition of this textbook. The second edition of this textbook thus contains a completely new chapter 4 devoted to the exact solution of the Ising model on the Bethe lattice using the method of exact recursion relations, while the chapter 5 was supplemented by exact results for ground state of a few frustrated Heisenberg spin models using the variational method. It is my hope that the next edition of this textbook will come soon and it will involve all topics specifically taught within the postgraduate course as well. 

Jozef Strečka