Skip to main content
TR EN

Course Catalog

PHYS 538 Phase Transitions and Renormalization-Group Theory 3 Credits
The students will learn the remarkable phenomena occurring at phase transitions that are universally applicable to a wide range of systems, and simple and physically intuitive theory for deriving these phenomena. The dialog between experiment and theory, as well as the rich confluence of the intuitive, phenomenological, approximate, rigorous, and numerical approaches, will be illustrated: Introduction: phase diagrams, thermodynamic limit, critical phenomena, universality. Classical theories: naive mean-field, constructive mean-field, Landau theories; Ginzburg criterion. Ising models and exact results: one dimension; two dimensions; duality; global phase diagrams. Scaling theory of Kadanoff. Exact renormalization-group treatments in one dimension. Approximate renormalization-group treatments in two dimensions. Thermodynamic functions and first-order phase transitions. Momentum-space renormalization group: Gaussian model, Landau-Wilson model, epsilon-expansion. Variational renormalization group; Migdal-Kadanoff transformations. Hierarchical lattices. Dynamics: stochastic models; detailed balance; dynamic universality classes. Superfluidity. Blume-Emery-Griffiths model. Global multicritical phenomena. Surface systems. q-state Potts and Potts-lattice-gas models. Exact critical and tricritical exponents. Helicity and reentrance. Chaotic renormalization groups and spin-glass order. Order under frozen disorder and frustration. Scale-free and small-world networks. Connection between geometric and thermal properties. Neural networks, simulated annealing, coding-decoding, using phase transition models. Renormalization-group theory of quantum spin and electronic conduction models. High Tc superconductivity. Electron-exchange induced antiferromagnetism. Reverse impurity effects on antiferromagnetism and superconductivity.
Last Offered Terms Course Name SU Credit
Fall 2016-2017 Phase Transitions and Renormalization-Group Theory 3
Fall 2015-2016 Phase Transitions and Renormalization-Group Theory 3
Spring 2012-2013 Phase Transitions and Renormalization-Group Theory 3
Spring 2011-2012 Phase Transitions and Renormalization-Group Theory 3
Fall 2010-2011 Phase Transitions and Renormalization-Group Theory 3
Fall 2009-2010 Phase Transitions and Renormalization-Group Theory 3
Prerequisite: __
Corequisite:
ECTS Credit: 10 ECTS (10 ECTS for students admitted before 2013-14 Academic Year)
General Requirements: