This book is the collection of most of the written versions of the Courses given at the Winter School "Beyond Quasicrystals" in Les Houches (March 7-18, 1994). The School gathered lecturers and participants from all over the world and was prepared in the spirit of a general effort to promote theoretical and experimental interdisciplinary communication between mathematicians, theoretical and experimental physicists on the topic of the nature of geometric order in solids beyond standard periodicity and quasi periodicity. The overall structure of the book reflects the wish of the editors to pose this fundamental question of geometric order in solids from both the experimental and theoretical point of view. The first part is devoted more specifically to quasicrystals. These materials were the common starting point of most of the audience and present a first concrete example of a non-trivial geometric order. We chose to focus on a few fundamental aspects of quasicrystals related to hidden symmetries in solids which are not easily found in standard textbooks on the topic, not to reach an exhaustive survey which is already available elsewhere.

Comprising the proceedings of the fall 1995 semester program arranged by The Fields Institute at the U. of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, this volume contains eleven contributions which address ordered aperiodic systems realized either as point sets with the Delone property or as tilings of a Euclidean space. This collection of articles aims to bring into the mainstream of mathematics and mathematical physics this developing field of study integrating algebra, geometry, Fourier analysis, number theory, crystallography, and theoretical physics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book is the collection of most of the written versions of the Courses given at the Winter School "Beyond Quasicrystals" in Les Houches (March 7-18, 1994). The School gathered lecturers and participants from all over the world and was prepared in the spirit of a general effort to promote theoretical and experimental interdisciplinary communication between mathematicians, theoretical and experimental physicists on the topic of the nature of geometric order in solids beyond standard periodicity and quasi periodicity. The overall structure of the book reflects the wish of the editors to pose this fundamental question of geometric order in solids from both the experimental and theoretical point of view. The first part is devoted more specifically to quasicrystals. These materials were the common starting point of most of the audience and present a first concrete example of a non-trivial geometric order. We chose to focus on a few fundamental aspects of quasicrystals related to hidden symmetries in solids which are not easily found in standard textbooks on the topic, not to reach an exhaustive survey which is already available elsewhere.

This book is a collection of part of the written versions of the Physics Courses given at the Winter School "Order, Chance and Risk: Aperiodic Phenomena from Solid State to Finance" held at the Les Houches Center for Physics, between February 23 and March 6, 1998. The School gathered lecturers and participants from all over the world. On a thematic level, the content of the school can be viewed both as a continuation (aperiodic phenomena in solid state physics) and an extension (mathematical aspects of fmance and economy) of the previous "Beyond Quasicrystals", also held at Les Houches, March 7-18 1994 and published in the same ·series. One of its important goals was to promote in-depth concrete scientific exchanges between theoretical physicists, experimental physicists and mathematicians on the one hand, and on the other hand practitioners of the economico-fmancial sphere and specialists of financial mathematics. Therefore, besides the mathematical tools and concepts at work in theoretical descriptions, relevant experimental data were also presented together with methods allowing their interpretation. As a result of this choice, the School was stimulated by experimentalists and fmancial market operators who joined the theoretical physicists and mathematicians at the conference. The present volume deals with the theoretical and experimental studies on aperiodic solids with long range order, incommensurate phases, quasicrystals, glasses, and more complex systems (fractal, chaotic), while a second volume to appear in the same series is devoted to the finance and economy facet.

From tilings to quasicrystal structures and from surfaces to the n-dimensional approach, this book gives a full, self-contained in-depth description of the crystallography of quasicrystals. It aims not only at conveying the concepts and a precise picture of the structures of quasicrystals, but it also enables the interested reader to enter the field of quasicrystal structure analysis. Going beyond metallic quasicrystals, it also describes the new, dynamically growing field of photonic quasicrystals. The readership will be graduate students and researchers in crystallography, solid-state physics, materials science, solid- state chemistry and applied mathematics.

The aim of this book is to acquaint the reader with what the author regards as the most basic characteristics of quasicrystals — structure, formation and stability, properties — in relationship with the applications of quasicrystalline materials.Quasicrystals are fascinating substances that form a family of specific structures with strange physical and mechanical properties as compared to those of metallic alloys. This, on the one hand, is stimulating intensive research to understand the most basic properties of quasicrystals in the frame of a generalized crystallography. On the other hand, these properties open the way to technological applications, demonstrated or potential, mostly regarding energy savings.This valuable book discusses those various facets of quasicrystals in five chapters, ending with the author's own interpretation of the properties with respect to their unique structure.