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Critical phenomena arise in a wide variety of physical systems. Classi cal examples are the liquid-vapour critical point or the paramagnetic ferromagnetic transition. Further examples include multicomponent fluids and alloys, superfluids, superconductors, polymers and fully developed tur bulence and may even extend to the quark-gluon plasma and the early uni verse as a whole. Early theoretical investigators tried to reduce the problem to a very small number of degrees of freedom, such as the van der Waals equation and mean field approximations, culminating in Landau's general theory of critical phenomena. Nowadays, it is understood that the common ground for all these phenomena lies in the presence of strong fluctuations of infinitely many coupled variables. This was made explicit first through the exact solution of the two-dimensional Ising model by Onsager. Systematic subsequent developments have been leading to the scaling theories of critical phenomena and the renormalization group which allow a precise description of the close neighborhood of the critical point, often in good agreement with experiments. In contrast to the general understanding a century ago, the presence of fluctuations on all length scales at a critical point is emphasized today. This can be briefly summarized by saying that at a critical point a system is scale invariant. In addition, conformal invaTiance permits also a non-uniform, local rescal ing, provided only that angles remain unchanged.
The history of critical phenomena goes back to the year 1869 when Andrews discovered the critical point of carbon dioxide, located at about 31°C and 73 atmospheres pressure. In the neighborhood ofthis point the carbon dioxide was observed to become opalescent, that is, light is strongly scattered. This is nowadays interpreted as comingfrom the strong fluctuations of the system close to the critical point. Subsequently, a wide varietyofphysicalsystems were realized to display critical points as well. Ofparticular importance was the observation of a critical point in ferromagnetic iron by Curie. Further examples include multicomponent fluids and alloys, superfluids, superconductors, polymers and may even extend to the quark-gluon plasmaand the early universe as a whole. Early theoretical investigationstried to reduce the problem to a very small number of degrees of freedom, such as the van der Waals equation and mean field approximations and culminating in Landau's general theory of critical phenomena. In a dramatic development, Onsager's exact solutionofthe two-dimensional Ising model made clear the important role of the critical fluctuations. Their role was taken into account in the subsequent developments leading to the scaling theories of critical phenomena and the renormalization group. These developements have achieved a precise description of the close neighborhood of the critical point and results are often in good agreement with experiments. In contrast to the general understanding a century ago, the presence of fluctuations on all length scales at a critical point is today emphasized.
This volume contains Introductory Notes and major reprints on conformal field theory and its applications to 2-dimensional statistical mechanics of critical phenomena. The subject relates to many different areas in contemporary physics and mathematics, including string theory, integrable systems, representations of infinite Lie algebras and automorphic functions.
Hardbound. This session of the Summer School in Theoretical Physics concentrated on the recent advances in areas of physics ranging from (super)strings to field theory and statistical mechanics. The articles contained in this volume provide a stimulating and up-to-date account of a rapidly growing subject.Discussion focussed on the many points of convergence between field theory and statistical mechanics: conformal field theory, field theory on a lattice, the study of strongly correlated electron systems, as in the Hubbard model, leading to topological Lagrangians, which are perhaps the key of the understanding of high Tc superconductivity or the fractional quantum Hall effect. The critical phenomena in (1+1) dimensions, in the domain in which quantum fluctuations are strong, are described for antiferromagnetic couplings by relativistic theories in which the methods of abelian or non-abelian bosonization are particularly powerful.
The history of critical phenomena goes back to the year 1869 when Andrews discovered the critical point of carbon dioxide, located at about 31°C and 73 atmospheres pressure. In the neighborhood ofthis point the carbon dioxide was observed to become opalescent, that is, light is strongly scattered. This is nowadays interpreted as comingfrom the strong fluctuations of the system close to the critical point. Subsequently, a wide varietyofphysicalsystems were realized to display critical points as well. Ofparticular importance was the observation of a critical point in ferromagnetic iron by Curie. Further examples include multicomponent fluids and alloys, superfluids, superconductors, polymers and may even extend to the quark-gluon plasmaand the early universe as a whole. Early theoretical investigationstried to reduce the problem to a very small number of degrees of freedom, such as the van der Waals equation and mean field approximations and culminating in Landau's general theory of critical phenomena. In a dramatic development, Onsager's exact solutionofthe two-dimensional Ising model made clear the important role of the critical fluctuations. Their role was taken into account in the subsequent developments leading to the scaling theories of critical phenomena and the renormalization group. These developements have achieved a precise description of the close neighborhood of the critical point and results are often in good agreement with experiments. In contrast to the general understanding a century ago, the presence of fluctuations on all length scales at a critical point is today emphasized.
This text provides a thoroughly modern graduate-level introduction to the theory of critical behaviour. It begins with a brief review of phase transitions in simple systems, then goes on to introduce the core ideas of the renormalisation group.
Over the past few years, finite-size scaling has become an increasingly important tool in studies of critical systems. This is partly due to an increased understanding of finite-size effects by analytical means, and partly due to our ability to treat larger systems with large computers. The aim of this volume was to collect those papers which have been important for this progress and which illustrate novel applications of the method. The emphasis has been placed on relatively recent developments, including the use of the &egr;-expansion and of conformal methods.
Conformal invariance has been a spectacularly successful tool in advancing our understanding of the two-dimensional phase transitions found in classical systems at equilibrium. This volume sharpens our picture of the applications of conformal invariance, introducing non-local observables such as loops and interfaces before explaining how they arise in specific physical contexts. It then shows how to use conformal invariance to determine their properties. Moving on to cover key conceptual developments in conformal invariance, the book devotes much of its space to stochastic Loewner evolution (SLE), detailing SLE’s conceptual foundations as well as extensive numerical tests. The chapters then elucidate SLE’s use in geometric phase transitions such as percolation or polymer systems, paying particular attention to surface effects. As clear and accessible as it is authoritative, this publication is as suitable for non-specialist readers and graduate students alike.
Based on class-tested notes, this text offers an introduction to Conformal Field Theory with a special emphasis on computational techniques of relevance for String Theory. It introduces Conformal Field Theory at a basic level, Kac-Moody algebras, one-loop partition functions, Superconformal Field Theories, Gepner Models and Boundary Conformal Field Theory. Eventually, the concept of orientifold constructions is explained in detail for the example of the bosonic string. In providing many detailed CFT calculations, this book is ideal for students and scientists intending to become acquainted with CFT techniques relevant for string theory but also for students and non-specialists from related fields.
Simple random walks - or equivalently, sums of independent random vari ables - have long been a standard topic of probability theory and mathemat ical physics. In the 1950s, non-Markovian random-walk models, such as the self-avoiding walk,were introduced into theoretical polymer physics, and gradu ally came to serve as a paradigm for the general theory of critical phenomena. In the past decade, random-walk expansions have evolved into an important tool for the rigorous analysis of critical phenomena in classical spin systems and of the continuum limit in quantum field theory. Among the results obtained by random-walk methods are the proof of triviality of the cp4 quantum field theo ryin space-time dimension d (::::) 4, and the proof of mean-field critical behavior for cp4 and Ising models in space dimension d (::::) 4. The principal goal of the present monograph is to present a detailed review of these developments. It is supplemented by a brief excursion to the theory of random surfaces and various applications thereof. This book has grown out of research carried out by the authors mainly from 1982 until the middle of 1985. Our original intention was to write a research paper. However, the writing of such a paper turned out to be a very slow process, partly because of our geographical separation, partly because each of us was involved in other projects that may have appeared more urgent.