Mathematical Foundations Of Statistical Mechanics | A. Ya. Khinchin

The present book considers as its main task to make the reader familiar with the mathematical treatment of statistical mechanics on the basis of modem concepts of the theory of probability and a maximum utilization of its analytic apparatus. The book is written, above all, for the mathematician, and its purpose is to introduce him to the problems of statistical mechanics in an atmosphere of logical precision, outside of which he cannot assimilate and work, and which, unfortunately, is lacking in the existing physical expositions.

The only essentially new material in this book consists in the systematic use of limit theorems of the theory of probability for rigorous proofs of asymptotic formulas without any special analytic apparatus. The few existing expositions which intended to give a rigorous proof to these formulas, were forced to use for this purpose special, rather cumbersome, mathematical ma­ chinery. We hope, however, that our exposition of several other questions (the ergodic problem, properties of entropy, intramolecular correlation, etc.) can claim to be new to a certain extent, at least in some of its parts.