A brief introduction is given to the renormalization group for non-relativistic fermions at finite density. It is shown that Landau's theory of the Fermi liquid arises as a fixed point (with the Landau parameters as marginal couplings) and its instabilities as relevant perturbations. Applications to related areas, nuclear matter, quark matter and quantum dots, are briefly discussed. The focus will be on explaining the main ideas to people in related fields, rather than addressing the experts.
This is the second part of the notes to the course on quantum theory of large systems of non-relativistic matter taught by J. Fröhlich at the 1994 Les Houches summer school. It is devoted to a sketchy exposition of some of the beautiful and important, recent results of J.Feldman and E.Trubowitz, and J. Feldman, H. Knörrer, D. Lehmann, J. Magnen, V. Rivasseau and E. Trubowitz. Their results are about a mathematical analysis of non-relativistic many-body theory, in particular of the Landau-Fermi liquid and BCS superconductivity, using Wilson's renormalization group methods and the techniques of the
1/N-expansion. While their work is ultimately aimed at a complete mathematical control (beyond perturbative expansions) of systems of weakly coupled electron gases at positive density and small or zero temperature, we can only illustrate some of their ideas within the context of perturbative solutions of Wilson-type renormalization group flow equations (we calculate leading-order terms in a
1/N-expansion, where
N is an energy scale) and of one-loop effective potential calculations of the BCS superconducting ground state. Contents: 1. Background material 2. Weakly coupled electron gases 3. The renormalization group flow 4. Spontaneous breaking of gauge invariance, and superconductivity