Artikelomschrijving

The third edition of Van Kampen's standard work has been revised and updated. The main difference with the second edition is that the contrived application of the quantum master equation in section 6 of chapter XVII has been replaced with a satisfactory treatment of quantum fluctuations. Apart from that throughout the text corrections have been made and a number of references to later developments have been included. From the recent textbooks the following are the most relevant. C.W.Gardiner, Quantum Optics (Springer, Berlin 1991) D.T. Gillespie, Markov Processes (Academic Press, San Diego 1992) W.T. Coffey, Yu. P. Kalmykov, and J.T.Waldron, The Langevin Equation (2nd edition, World Scientific, 2004). It is a comprehensive coverage of fluctuations and stochastic methods for describing them. It is a must for students and researchers in applied mathematics, physics and physical chemistry.