Abstract: This book presents a statistical theory of complex wave scattering and quantum transport in a class of physical systems of current interest having chaotic classical dynamics (e.g., microwave cavities and quantum dots) or possessing quenched randomness (e.g., disordered conductors). The emphasis here is on mesoscopic fluctuations of the sample-specific transport. The universal character of the statistical behaviour of these phenomena is revealed in a natural way through a novel maximum-entropy approach (MEA). The latter leads to the most probable distribution for the set of random matrices that describe the ensemble of disordered/chaotic samples, which are macroscopically identical but differ in microscopic details. Here, the Shannon information entropy associated with these random matrices is maximized subject to the symmetries and the constraints which are physically relevant. This non-perturbative information-theoretic approach is reminiscent of, but distinct from, the standard random-matrix theory, and indeed forms the most distinctive feature of the book.

Keywords: statistical nuclear reactions, random-matrix theory, scattering matrix, transfer matrix, linear-response theory, quantum transport, maximum-entropy method, open chaotic cavities, Poisson's Kernel, disordered conductors