Slow, intermediate and fast dynamics in condensed matter

As is well-known, in gas dynamics there are three levels of descriptions: microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic. The corresponding equations are: Lionville, Boltzmann, and hydrodynamic equations, respectively. The difficulty of condensed matter such as classical liquids is general absence of well-defined mesoscopic level of description which is a scaffold so to speak enabling us to jump from microscopic to macroscopic descriptions. However, there are certain circumstances in which this is possible as we illustrate for critical dynamics and phase ordering kinetics. Published by Elsevier Science B.V.