Publisher's Synopsis
This book addresses various aspects of nonlinearities in complex systems, ie. systems comprising simple (possibly nonlinear) elements, which combine to give a complex overall behaviour. Complex systems have come to play a crucial role in computer science, physics, chemistry and biology and have been the subject of much recent interest. Most of the chapters in this book are pedagogical reviews of research problems in the area of complex systems and should be of interest to students and researchers in science and engineering. The articles cover a wide range of subjects including plastic flow of material, disordered systems, surface growth phenomena, pattern formation in spatially extended systems, atomic clusters and quantum stochastic phenomena.
