Statistical Physics of Spin Glasses and Information Processing An Introduction [Hardcover]

Spin glasses are magnetic materials. Statistical mechanics, a subfield of physics, has been a powerful tool to theoretically analyze various unique properties of spin glasses. This book is one of the first publications in the theoretically analyze various unique properties of spi interdisciplinary field. It provides readers with a sound introduction to the field and to the analytical techniques necessary to follow its most recent developments.

1. Mean-field theory of phase transitions
2. Mean-field theory of spin glasses
3. Replica symmetry breaking
4. Gauge theory of spin glasses
5. Error-correcting codes
6. Image restoration
7. Associative memory
8. Learning in perception
9. Optimization problems
Index

Assuming only general knowledge of statistical mechanics and basic probability theory, Nishimori (physics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan) reviews recent developments in error-correcting codes, image restoration, neural networks, and optimization problems. He provides a unified viewpoint traversing several different research fields with the replica methods as the common language, which emerged from the spin glass theory. The spin glass theory itself is addressed in the first part, followed by statistical-mechanical approaches to information processing problems. --SciTech BookNews