Aims
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To provide a challenging and stimulating introduction to a selection
of topics within modern theoretical physics and statistical mechanics and
to expose the students to active and contemporary research areas.
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To study cooperative phenomena in disordered, equilibrium, and nonequilibrium
systems, that is, study systems consisting of many microscopic
agents, bringing about macroscopic phenomena that cannot be
understood by considering a single agent alone.
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To provide an introduction to and understanding of
the concepts of fractals, scaling, critical points,
and phase transitions in disordered and equilibrium systems.
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To discuss the concept of universality and the important
implications hereof.
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To provide an introduction to the concept of self-organisation
in nonequilibrium systems.
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To discuss scale invariance and the concept of self-organised
criticality in nonequilibrium systems and contrast this with scale
invariance in disordered and equilibrium systems.