book to be published as a special volume in the book series Reviews of Nonlinear Dynamics and Complexity (H.G. Schuster, Ed.); see here for volume 1, volume 2 and volume 3 of this book series; project in collaboration with Wiley-VCH (Weinheim)

The term ``small systems'' denotes objects composed of a limited, small number of particles, as is typical for matter on nanoscales. The interest of the scientific community on small systems has been boosted by the recent advent of micromanipulation techniques and nanotechnologies. These provide adequate scientific instruments that can measure tiny energies in physical systems under nonequilibrium conditions. Prominent examples of small systems are biopolymers, molecular motors, nanopores, and even single molecules moving in optical traps. Understanding the statistical physical properties of such systems is particularly challenging, because the small size of these systems does not allow to apply standard methods of statistical physics and thermodynamics, which presuppose large particle numbers. Small systems can exhibit an intricate interplay between nonlinear microscopic dynamical properties and macroscopic statistical behavior leading to highly non-trivial fluctuations of physical properties. This becomes particularly interesting in nonequilibrium situations, that is, when these systems are exposed to external gradients or fields. The physical description and understanding of such systems requires both new experimental techniques on nanoscales as well as novel theoretical concepts of nonlinear dynamics, statistical physics and the theory of stochastic processes. A particularly important role in this field is played by so-called fluctuation relations, which generalize the second law of thermodynamics to small systems. Summarizing different types of fluctuation relations will form a main part of this book

Style of this book:
For this book, selected international scientists working in this field have been invited to write single book chapters, which will introduce to key aspects of research in this field. The final list of authors is included below. This multi-author reference work is thus intended to provide a general introduction to graduate students, young scientists and established researchers who wish to work themselves into this new, very active field of research. To our knowledge, so far no review or book is available that summarizes the many different existing different approaches to small systems physics. This book will hopefully fill this gap in the current literature.

The publication of this book is scheduled for Summer 2012.