Search

During August 24-27, 1993, approximately 60 scientists from the Americas, Europe and Japan, gathered in the city of Guanajuato, in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, at the II Latin American Workshop on Magnetism, Magnetic Materials and their Applications. The group of scientists converging into the beautiful city of Guanajuato had come from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba, several places in Mexico, U. S. A., Japan, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Denmark. The event attested to the success of the previous Workshop on Magnetism, Magnetic Materials and their Applications, held in Havana, Cuba, in 1991, as well as to the interest, level of activity and quality of the work being carried out in Latin America in the area of magnetism and magnetic materials. Equally important to everyone present was the fact that we had come to honor a friend, Professor L. M. Falicov, on his sixtieth birthday. The choice of a Latin American Workshop on magnetism as a Festschrift for Leo Falicov was, in our opinion, quite appropriate not only because of Leo's strong ties to Latin America, but also because of his superb contributions to science, and in particular, to magnetism. Professor Falicov was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he spent a good part of his formative years.

This volume is a compilation of papers presented at the International Workshop on the Theory and Applications of the Cluster Variation and Path Probability Methods, held in the city of San Juan, Teotihuacan, Mexico, during June 18-22, 1995. The presentations at the workshop provided a state of the art review of the fundamental aspects of the CVM and PPM and their application to a wide range of problems in statistical mechanics and alloy theory. The volume begins with several articles dealing with the study of the kinetics of ordering in Ising sytems and alloys using the PPM and other classical techniques. These articles are followed by the contribution of Professor Masuo Suzuki on the Coherent Anomaly Method which has added a new dimension to mean field theory, and the CVM in particular, in the study of critical phenomena. The remaining of the volume is dedicated to fundamental aspects and specific applications of the CVM in a wide range of subjects ranging from bulk and surface studies to new areas of inquiry such as the problem of image reconstruction. Since the inception by Prof. Ryoichi Kikuchi of the CVM in 1950 and of the PPM in 1966, the latter after a gestation period of approximately six years, the tech­ niques have found wide acceptance in the physics and materials science communities. Both methods are properly regarded as seminal contributions to equilibrium and non­ equilibrium statistical mechanics.

This volume contains the papers presented at the First Mexico-U.S.A. Symposium on Materials Sciences and Engineering held in Ixtapa, Guerrero, Mexico, during Septem­ ber 24-27, 1991. The conference was conceived with the primary objective of increas­ ing the close ties between scientists and engineers in both Mexico and the U.S. with an interest in materials. The conference itself would have not taken place without the drive, determination and technical knowledge of John K. Tien of the University of Texas at Austin and of Francisco Mejia Lira of the Universidad de San Luis Potosi. This book is dedicated to their memory. The event brought together materials scientists and engineers with interests in a broad range of subjects in the processing, characterization and properties of advanced materials. Several papers were dedicated to structural materials ranging from ferrous alloys to intemetallics, ceramics and composites. The presentation covered properties, processing, and factors that control their use, such as fatigue and corrosion. Other materials and properties were also explored by U.S. and Mexican participants. Sev­ eral papers dealt with the characterization and properties of magnetics, optical and superconductor materials, nanostructured materials, as well as with computational and theoretical aspects likely to impact future materials research and development.