Sociophysics: An Introduction

Parongama Sen is Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Calcutta. Her research interests include phase transitions and critical phenomena, complex networks, physics of quantum and classical random walks, and applications of physics to social sciences. Bikas K. Chakrabarti is Professor of Physics at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, and Visiting Professor of Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute. He has research interests in statistical physics, condensed matter physics, physics of quantum glasses, annealing and computation, and applications of physics to social sciences.

1. Introduction ; 2. Basic features of social systems and modelling ; 3. Opinion formation in a society ; 4. Social choices and popularity ; 5. Crowd avoiding dynamical phenomena ; 6. Social phenomena on complex networks ; 7. Of flocks, flows and transports ; 8. Endnote ; Appendix A: Phase transitions and critical phenomena ; Appendix B: Magnetic systems: static and dynamical behaviour ; Appendix C: Percolation and fractals ; Appendix D: Random walks ; Appendix E: Monte Carlo simulations ; Appendix F: Some data analysis methods and useful tables