Elements of constitutive model formulation for simple materials within a thermodynamic, finite deformation framework are reviewed. Recent developments in addressing the second law and entropy existence are discussed. Caratheodory-based approaches are emphasized for their simplicity and ease of interpretation. An original treatment of finite thermoviscoelasticity is developed in this context. A ...

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t We investigate the cooperative effects of a single finite chain of monomers near an attractive substrate by first constructing a conformational pseudo-phase diagram based on the thermal fluctuations of energetic and structural quantities. Then, the adsorption transition is analyzed in more detail. This is conveniently done by a microcanonical analysis of de...

A central role in the thermodynamic formalism of measure preserving transformations is played by the pressure function. For the setup of random dynamical systems (skew-product transformations) we introduce this notion properly and for the special case of random subshifts of nite type we present some equivalent deenitions, which are better to handle. On the basis of these notions we are able to ...

We propose a new method for simulating QCD at finite density, where interesting phases such as the color superconductivity phase is conjectured to appear. The method is based on a general factorization property of distribution functions of observables, and it is therefore applicable to any system with a complex action. The so-called overlap problem is completely eliminated by the use of constra...

We present a new method for obtaining the response function 9 and its average G from which most of the properties of learning and generalization in linear perceptrons can be derived. We first rederive the known results for the 'thermodynamic limit' of infinite perceptron size N and show explicitly that 9 is self-averaging in this limit. We then discuss extensions of our method to more general l...

We develop an adaptive finite element method for island dynamics in epitaxial growth. We study a step-flow model, which consists of an adatom (adsorbed atom) diffusion equation on terraces of different height; thermodynamic boundary conditions on terrace boundaries including anisotropic line tension; and the normal velocity law for the motion of such boundaries determined by a two-sided flux, t...

We obtain effective potential of O(N)-symmetric φ theory for large N starting with a finite lattice system and taking the thermodynamic limit with great care. In the thermodynamic limit, it is globally real-valued and convex in both the symmetric and the broken phases. In particular, it has a flat bottom in the broken phase. Taking the continuum limit, we discuss renormalization effects to the ...