Analytical Mechanics An Introduction Antonio Fasano

Analytical Mechanics

An Introduction

Antonio Fasano

The proposal of translating this book into English came from Dr. Sonke Adlung of OUP, to whom we express our gratitude. The translation was preceded by hard work to produce a new version of the Italian text incorporating some modifications we had agreed upon with Dr. Adlung (for instance the inclusion of worked out problems at the end of each chapter). The result was the second Italian edition (Bollati-Boringhieri, 2002), which was the original source for the translation. However, thanks to the kind collaboration of the translator, Dr. Beatrice Pelloni, in the course of the translation we introduced some further improvements with the aim of better fulfilling the original aim of this book: to explain analytical mechanics (which includes some very complex topics) with mathematical rigour using nothing more than the notions of plain calculus. For this reason the book should be readable by undergraduate students, although it contains some rather advanced material which
makes it suitable also for courses of higher level mathematics and physics. Despite the size of the book, or rather because of it, conciseness has been a constant concern of the authors. The book is large because it deals not only with the basic notions of analytical mechanics, but also with some of its main applications: astronomy, statistical mechanics, continuum mechanics and (very briefly)
field theory.
The book has been conceived in such a way that it can be used at different levels: for instance the two chapters on statistical mechanics can be read, skipping the chapter on ergodic theory, etc. The book has been used in various Italian universities for more than ten years and we have been very pleased by the reactions of colleagues and students. Therefore we are confident that the translation can prove to be useful.

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