Condensed Matter Physics and Exactly Soluble Models, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2004 Selecta of Elliott H. Lieb

This is the third Selecta of publications of Elliott Lieb, the first two being Stabil­ ity of Matter: From Atoms to Stars, edited by Walter Thirring, and Inequalities, edited by Michael Loss and Mary Beth Ruskai. A companion fourth Selecta on Statistical Mechanics is also edited by us. Elliott Lieb has been a pioneer of the discipline of mathematical physics as it is nowadays understood and continues to lead several of its most active directions today. For the first part of this selecta we have made a selection of Lieb's works on Condensed Matter Physics. The impact of Lieb's work in mathematical con­ densed matter physics is unrivaled. It is fair to say that if one were to name a founding father of the field, Elliott Lieb would be the only candidate to claim this singular position. While in related fields, such as Statistical Mechanics and Atomic Physics, many key problems are readily formulated in unambiguous mathematical form, this is less so in Condensed Matter Physics, where some say that rigor is "probably impossible and certainly unnecessary". By carefully select­ ing the most important questions and formulating them as well-defined mathemat­ ical problems, and then solving a good number of them, Lieb has demonstrated the quoted opinion to be erroneous on both counts. What is true, however, is that many of these problems turn out to be very hard. It is not unusual that they take a decade (even several decades) to solve.

A Survey by the Editors.- I.1 Violation of the Noncrossing Rule: The Hubbard Hamiltonian for Benzene.- I.2 Two Theorems on the Hubbard Model.- I.3 The Hubbard Model: Some Rigorous Results and Open Problems.- I.4 Flux Phase of the Half-Filled Band.- II.1 Proof of the Peierls Instability in One Dimension.- II.2 Stability of the Peierls Instability for Ring Shaped Molecules.- III.1 A Model for Crystallization: A Variation on the Hubbard Model.- III.2 Phase Separation due to Quantum Mechanical Correlations.- IV.1 Theory of Ferromagnetism and the Ordering of Electronic Energy Levels.- IV.2 Ordering Energy Levels of Interacting Spin Systems.- IV.3 Magnetic Properties of Some Itinerant-Electron Systems at T > 0.- V.1 Phase Transitions in Reservoir-Driven Open Systems with Applications to Lasers and Superconductors.- V.2 Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics of Matter Interacting with the Quantized Radiation Field.- V.3 Constructive Macroscopic Quantum Electrodynamics.- V.4 The Laser: A Reversible Quantum Dynamical System with Irreversible Classical Macroscopic Motion.- VI.1 A Proof of Part of Haldane’s Conjecture on Spin Chains.- VI.2 Rigorous Results on Valence-Bond Ground States in Antiferromagnets.- VI.3 Valence Bond Ground States in Isotropic Quantum Antiferromagnets.- VI.4 Ground State Properties of a Fully Frustrated Quantum Spin System.- VII.1 Exact Ground State Energy of the Strong-Coupling Polaron.- VIII.1 Simplified Approach to the Ground-State Energy of an Imperfect Bose Gas.- VIII.2 Bose—Einstein Quantum Phase Transition in an Optical Lattice Model.- VIII.3 The Quantum-Mechanical Many-Body Problem: The Bose Gas.- Some of the Early History of Exactly Soluble Models.- IX.1 Exact Solution of the Problem of the Entropy of Two-Dimensional Ice.- IX.2 Exact Solution ofthe F Model of an Antiferroelectric.- IX.3 Exact Solution of the Two-Dimensional Slater KDP Model of a Ferroelectric.- IX.4 Residual Entropy of Square Ice.- IX.5 Two-Dimensional Ferroelectric Models.- IX.6 Relations Between the ‘Percolation’ and ‘Colouring’ Problem and Other Graph-Theoretical Problems Associated with Regular Planar Lattices: Some Exact Results for the ‘Percolation’ Problem.- IX.7 Analytic Properties of the Free Energy for the “Ice” Models.- X.1 Two-Dimensional Ising Model as a Soluble Problem of Many Fermions.- X.2 Solution of the Dimer Problem by the Transfer Matrix Method.- XI.1 Two Soluble Models of an Antiferromagnetic Chain.- XII.1 Exact Analysis of an Interacting Bose Gas. I. The General Solution and the Ground State.- XII.2 Exact Analysis of an Interacting Bose Gas. II. The Excitation Spectrum.- XIII.1 Delta-Function Fermi Gas with Two-Spin Deviates.- XIII.2 Absence of Mott Transition in an Exact Solution of the Short-Range, One-Band Model on One Dimension.- XIV.1 Exact Solution of a Many-Fermion System and Its Associated Boson Field.- Selecta of Elliott H. Lieb.- Publications of Elliott H. Lieb.

This is a collection of groundbreaking papers by E. Lieb, one of the founding fathers of mathematical solid state physics