Recent discoveries of new materials and improvements in calorimetric techniques have given new impetus to the subject of specific heat. Nevertheless, there is a serious lack of literature on the subject. This invaluable book, which goes some way towards remedying that, is concerned mainly with the specific heat of matter at ordinary temperatures. It discusses the principles that underlie the theory of specific heat and considers a number of theoretical models in some detail. The subject matter ranges from traditional materials to those recently discovered — heavy fermion compounds, high temperature superconductors, spin glasses and so on — and includes a large number of figures, tables and references. The book will be particularly useful for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academics and researchers./a

This work was begun quite some time ago at the University of Oxford during the tenure of an Overseas Scholarship of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and was completed at Banga lore when the author was being supported by a maintenance allowance from the CSIR Pool for unemployed scientists. It is hoped that significant developments taking place as late as the beginning of 1965 have been incorporated. The initial impetus and inspiration for the work came from Dr. K. Mendelssohn. To him and to Drs. R. W. Hill and N. E. Phillips, who went through the whole of the text, the author is obliged in more ways than one. For permission to use figures and other materials, grateful thanks are tendered to the concerned workers and institutions. The author is not so sanguine as to imagine that all technical and literary flaws have been weeded out. If others come across them, they may be charitably brought to the author's notice as proof that physics has become too vast to be comprehended by a single onlooker. E. S. RAJA GoPAL Department of Physics Indian Institute of Science Bangalore 12, India November 1965 v Contents Introduction ................................................................. .

The aim of this book is to provide information about performing experi ments at low temperatures, as well as basic facts concerning the low tem perature properties of liquid and solid matter. To orient the reader, I begin with chapters on these low temperature properties. The major part of the book is then devoted to refrigeration techniques and to the physics on which they are based. Of equal importance, of course, are the definition and measurement of temperature; hence low temperature thermometry is extensively discussed in subsequent chapters. Finally, I describe a variety of design and construction techniques which have turned out to be useful over the years. The content of the book is based on the three-hour-per-week lecture course which I have given several times at the University of Bayreuth between 1983 and 1991. It should be particularly suited for advanced stu dents whose intended masters (diploma) or Ph.D. subject is experimental condensed matter physics at low temperatures. However, I believe that the book will also be of value to experienced scientists, since it describes sev eral very recent advances in experimental low temperature physics and technology, for example, new developments in nuclear refrigeration and thermometry.

Since 1955 Progress in Low Temperature Physics has continued to monitor scientific achievements in the realm of low-temperature physics. Obtaining low temperatures used to be an aim in itself in the past, whereas nowadays achieving millikelvin temperatures is a routine experimental procedure. However, the properties of materials at these low temperatures contine to produce fascinating physics: the liquid, solid and superfluid, phases of the quantum fluids 3He and 4He as well as 'new' materials such as high-temperature superconductors and tiny quantum devices display their macroscopic quantum behavior only at the lowest temperatures. Volume XIII of this series continues the tradition of collecting fundamental studies of macroscopic quantum phenomena. In this volume, properties of new systems such as small circuits at low temperatures and high-Tc superconductors are studied. But the systems that are formed by 3He and 4He and their mixtures at low temperatures continue to dazzle and amaze with their ever more intricate properties studied with increasing accuracy. This volume provides the reader with an archival overview of the magic world of low temperatures as perceived by todays most sensitive probes.