Quantum Statistics of Charged Particle Systems, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1986

The year 1985 represents a special anniversary for people dealing with Ooulomb systems. 200 years ago, in 1785, Oharles Auguste de Ooulomb (1736-1806) found "Ooulomb's law" for the interaction force between charged particles. The authors want to dedicate this book to the honour of the great pioneer of electrophysics. Recent statistical mechanics is mainly restricted to systems of neutral particles. Except for a few monographs and survey articles (see, e. g., IOHIMARU, 1973, 1982; KUDRIN, 1974; KLIMONTOVIOH, 1975; EBELING, KRAEFT and KREMP, 1976, 1979; KALMAN and CARINI, 1978; BAUS and HANSEN, 1980; GILL, 1981, VELO and WIGHT­ MAN, 1981; MATSUBARA, 1982) the extended material on charged particle systems, which is now available thanks to the efforts of many workers in statistical mechanics, is widely dispersed in many original articles. It is the aim of this monograph to represent at least some part of the known results on charged particle systems from a unified point of view. Here the method of Green's functions turns out to be a powerful method especially to overcome the difficulties connected with the statistical physics of charged particle systems; some of them are . mentioned in the introduction. Here we can point, e.g., to the appearance of bound states in a medium and their role as new entities.

1. Introduction.- 2. Physical Concepts and Exact Results.- 2.1. Basic Concepts for Coulomb Systems.- 2.2. Survey of Exact Quantum-Mechanical Results for Coulomb Systems.- 2.3. Survey of Exact Quantum-Statistical Results for Macroscopic Coulomb Systems.- 3. Quantum Statistics of Many-Particle Systems.- 3.1. Elements of Quantum Statistics.- 3.2. The Method of Green’s Functions in Quantum Statistics.- 3.3. Quantum Statistics of Charged Many-Particle Systems.- 4. Application of the Green’s Function Technique to Coulomb Systems.- 4.1. Types of Different Approximations.- 4.2. Dielectric Properties of Charged Particle Systems. Random Phase Approximation.- 4.3. Single-Particle Excitations.- 4.5. Dielectric Function Including Bound States.- 5. Equilibrium Properties in Classical and Quasiclassical Approximation.- 5.1. The One-Component Plasma Model.- 5.2. Many-Component Systems. Slater Sums.- 5.3. The Pair Distribution Function.- 5.4. Thermodynamic Functions.- 6. Quantum-Statistical Calculations of Equilibrium Properties.- 6.1. Equation of State in the Screened Ladder Approximation.- 6.2. Density and Chemical Potential in the Screened Ladder Approximation.- 6.3. One-Component Plasmas.- 6.4. Electron-Hole Plasmas.- 6.5. Hydrogen Plasmas.- 6.6. Alkali Plasmas and Noble Gas Plasmas.- 7. Transport Properties.- 7.1. Linear Response Theory.- 7.2. Evaluation of Collision Integrals Using Green’s Functions.- 7.3. Further Improvements of the Transport Theory.- 8. Green’s Function Approach to Optical Properties.- 8.1. General Formalism.- 8.2. Evaluation of Line Shift and Broadening.- 8.3. Further Approaches and Concluding Remarks.- 9. References.- 10. Subject Index.