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Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics

Correlation length and the scaling parameter in the renormalization group

Fabrizio Dolcini, L. Ferrari, A. Rioli, C. Degli Esposti Boschi

Published Mar 1, 1998• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The basic procedure of renormalization group theory is used to split the free energy into a Kadanoff block formation part, and a renormalized block-block interaction part. The study of this redistribution as a function of the scaling parameter $s$ shows that there is a stationarity value ${s}^{*}$ of $s$, which turns out to have the same critical behavior as the correlation length. It is suggested that ${s}^{*}$ can be used as an appropriate measure and definition of the correlation length, even for noncritical regions. The calculation of ${s}^{*}$ is thereby performed explicitly for the Gaussian, and numerically for the ${S}^{4}$ model. A sharp separation between noncorrelated and correlated regimes is also found for the Gaussian model, well above the critical temperature. For the ${S}^{4}$ model, the results suggest that $\ensuremath{\xi}$ is characterized by a high-temperature Gaussian branch and by a genuine ${S}^{4}$ branch at low temperatures, connected by a ``plateau'' in the intermediate region.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.57.2594

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The basic procedure of renormalization group theory is used to split the free energy into a Kadanoff block formation part, and a renormalized block-block interaction part. The study of this redistribution as a function of the scaling parameter sss shows that there is a stationarity value s∗{s}^{*}s∗ of sss, which turns out to have the same critical behavior as the correlation length. It is suggested that s∗{s}^{*}s∗ can be used as an appropriate measure and definition of the correlation length, even for noncritical regions. The calculation of s∗{s}^{*}s∗ is thereby performed explicitly for the Gaussian, and numerically for the S4{S}^{4}S4 model. A sharp separation between noncorrelated and correlated regimes is also found for the Gaussian model, well above the critical temperature. For the S4{S}^{4}S4 model, the results suggest that \ensuremathξ\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremathξ is characterized by a high-temperature Gaussian branch and by a genuine S4{S}^{4}S4 branch at low temperatures, connected by a ``plateau'' in the intermediate region.
As discussed in the previous chapter, the phenomenological theory of critical phenomena finds a sound basis in the logical sequence of universality, scaling, relevant and irrelevant variables. The difficult problem of a large number of degrees of freedom strongly correlated within the coherence distance, which diverges at criticality, is thereby, in principle, reduced to the determination of the homogeneous form of the relevant response functions and of the evaluation of a few critical indices related to the relevant parameters, whereas the details specifying each system do not matter. In order to give a microscopic foundation to universality and to the scaling theory, an exact transformation is needed, which changes into a scaling transformation asymptotically near the critical point. This is the renormalization group (RG) approach, recently presented in a huge number of reviewpapers and books.Historically, the first comprehensive overview was given by the sixth volume of the series edited by Domb and Green (1976) and by the classic books by Patashinskij and Pokrovskij (1979) and by Ma (1976). Along with scaling theory, the field-theoretic renormalization group (RG) approach (Gell- Mann and Low (1954); Bogoliubov and Shirkov (1959); Bonch-Bruevich and Tyablikov (1962)) was introduced in critical phenomena (Di Castro and Jona-Lasinio (1969)) by showing how the RG equations generalize the universality relations in the sense that they relate one model system to another by varying the coupling and suitably rescaling the other variables and the correlation functions. At the same time a detailed analysis of the pertubative diagrammatic structure of the correlation functions together with the use of Ward identities yielded a renormalized theory (Migdal (1969); Polyakov (1968, 1969)). By iterating the RG transformation the coupling disappears from the equations near to the critical point, the homogeneous form of the static order-parameter correlation function is obtained and a microscopic definition of the critical indices is given. The scaling picture then acquires a theoretical basis. Wilson (Wilson (1971a, b); Wilson and Kogut (1974)) gave a great contribution to the understanding of the physics underlying the RG procedure and to the explicit calculation of the critical indices. He proposed a simple mathematical realization of the other very physical idea of universality due to Kadanoff of grouping together degrees of freedom on the scale s associated with larger and larger cells.
Critical point scaling in a field HHH applies for the limits $t\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ (where $t=T/{T}_{c}\ensuremath{-}1)$ and $H\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ but with the ratio $R=t/{H}^{2/\ensuremath{\Delta}}$ finite. $\ensuremath{\Delta}$ is a critical exponent of the zero-field transition. We study the replicon correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}$ and from it the crossover scaling function f(R)f(R)f(R) defined via $1/(\ensuremath{\xi}{H}^{4/(d+2\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\eta})})\ensuremath{\sim}f(R)$. We have calculated analytically f(R)f(R)f(R) for the mean-field limit of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model. In dimension d=3d=3d=3, we have determined the exponents and the critical scaling function f(R)f(R)f(R) within two versions of the Migdal-Kadanoff (MK) renormalization group procedure. One of the MK versions gives results for f(R)f(R)f(R) in d=3d=3d=3 in reasonable agreement with those of the Monte Carlo simulations at the values of RRR for which they can be compared. If there were a de Almeida-Thouless (AT) line for $d\ensuremath{\le}6$, it would appear as a zero of the function f(R)f(R)f(R) at some negative value of RRR, but there is no evidence for such behavior. This is consistent with the arguments that there should be no AT line for $d\ensuremath{\le}6$, which we review.
This chapter explains how the scaling hypothesis follows from the presence of a diverging correlation length. It shows the relationship between coupling constants defined at different length scales is more complicated than assumed. K. G. Wilson elaborated and completed L. P. Kadanoff’s argument, showing how the relationship between coupling constants at different length scales could be explicitly computed, at least approximately. Wilson’s theory — the renormalisation group (RG) — is capable of estimating the critical exponents. The RG also provides a natural framework in which to understand universality. The chapter provides the argument in two parts, the first being the thermodynamic scaling laws, and the second being the scaling laws for the two-point correlation function. Kadanoff’s block spin argument successfully motivates the functional form of the scaling relations. The conceptual importance of the argument is that it suggests how fruitful it might be to get away from the conventional statistical mechanical approach of treating all the degrees of freedom at once.
To set the stage for our subsequent thorough discussion of dynamic critical phenomena, we first review the theoretical description of second-order equilibrium phase transitions. (Readers already well acquainted with this material may readily move on to Chapter 2.) To this end, we compare the critical exponents following from the van-der-Waals equation of state for weakly interacting gases with the results from the Curie–Weiss mean-field approximation for the ferromagnetic Ising model. We then provide a unifying description in terms of Landau–Ginzburg theory, i.e., a long-wavelength expansion of the effective free energy with respect to the order parameter. The Gaussian model is analyzed, and a quantitative criterion is established that defines the circumstances when non-linear fluctuations need to be taken into account properly. Thereby we identify d c = 4 as the upper critical dimension for generic continuous phase transitions in thermal equilibrium. The most characteristic feature of a critical point turns out to be the divergence of the correlation length that renders microscopic details oblivious. As a consequence, not only the correlation functions, but remarkably the thermodynamics as well of a critical system are governed by an emergent unusual symmetry: scale invariance. A simple scaling ansatz is capable of linking different critical exponents; as an application, we introduce the basic elements of finite-size scaling. Finally, a brief sketch of Wilson's momentum shell renormalization group method is presented, intended as a pedagogical preview of the fundamental RG ideas. Exploiting the scale invariance properties at the critical point, the scaling forms of the free energy and the order parameter correlation function are derived.
The one-dimensional Ising model with ferromagnetic interactions which decay as 1/${\mathit{r}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}$ is considered. Using a real-space renormalization group scheme (RG) we calculate the critical temperature and the correlation-length critical exponent as a function of \ensuremath{\alpha}. General asymptotic properties are obtained for arbitrary values of the rescaling length b of the RG transformation. Several rigorous results are recovered exactly in the limit b\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}. We obtain a b=\ensuremath{\infty} extrapolation of the critical temperature for arbitrary values of \ensuremath{\alpha}>1, which we conjecture aproximates with high precision the exact one. In particular, we obtain the value Tc{\mathit{T}}_{\mathit{c}}Tc​/J=${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\pi}}}^{2}$/12 for the 1/r2{\mathit{r}}^{2}r2 model.
A simple systematic rule, inspired by high-temperature series expansion (HTSE) results, is proposed for optimizing the expression for thermodynamic observables of ferromagnets exhibiting critical behavior at Tc{T}_{c}Tc​. This ``extended scaling'' scheme leads to a protocol for the choice of scaling variables, $\ensuremath{\tau}=(T\ensuremath{-}{T}_{c})∕T$ or $({T}^{2}\ensuremath{-}{T}_{c}^{2})∕{T}^{2}$ depending on the observable instead of $(T\ensuremath{-}{T}_{c})∕{T}_{c}$, and more importantly to temperature dependent noncritical prefactors for each observable. The rule corresponds to scaling of the leading term of the reduced susceptibility above Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ as ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{c}^{*}(T)\ensuremath{\sim}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\gamma}}$ in agreement with standard practice with scaling variable $\ensuremath{\tau}$ and for the leading term of the second-moment correlation length as ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{c}^{*}(T)\ensuremath{\sim}{T}^{\ensuremath{-}1∕2}{\ensuremath{\tau}}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\nu}}$. For the specific heat in bipartite lattices, the rule gives ${C}_{c}^{*}(T)\ensuremath{\sim}{T}^{\ensuremath{-}2}{[({T}^{2}\ensuremath{-}{T}_{c}^{2})∕{T}^{2}]}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}}$. The latter two expressions are not standard. The scheme can allow for confluent and noncritical correction terms. A stringent test of the extended scaling is made through analyses of high-precision numerical and HTSE data, or real data, on the three-dimensional canonical Ising, XYXYXY, and Heisenberg ferromagnets. For the susceptibility $\ensuremath{\chi}(T)$ and the correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}(T)$ of the three ferromagnets, their optimized expression, which consists of the leading terms [respectively, ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{c}^{*}(T)$ and ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{c}^{*}(T)$] and a quite limited number of confluent and noncritical correction terms, represents real data to surprisingly good approximations over the entire temperature range from Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ to infinity. The temperature dependent prefactors introduced are of crucial importance not only in fixing the optimized expression at relatively high temperatures but also in determining appropriately the small amplitude correction terms. For the specific heat of the Ising ferromagnet, Cc∗(T){C}_{c}^{*}(T)Cc∗​(T) combined with two noncritical correction terms which are calculated with no free parameters once the correlation length critical parameters are known reproduces real data nicely also over the whole temperature range.