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Physics Bulletin

Introduction au Groupe de Renormalisation et à ses Applications

G. Barton

Published Dec 1, 1975• 14 citations
Publisher

Abstract

(in French) G Toulouse and P Pfeuty Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble 1975 pp 278 price FF 65 Of all the important developments in theoretical physics over the last 20 years or more, the recent burgeoning of the renormalization group in statistical mechanics and in field theory has surely been the least well served by general reviews and introductions. Though exciting in their overall tenour and useful to the already active researcher, these have been exceptionally difficult of access even from immediately neighbouring fields.

DOI
10.1088/0031-9112/26/12/041

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Physics Bulletin•Apr 1, 1972•194 citations
(in French) G Toulouse and P Pfeuty Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble 1975 pp 278 price FF 65 Of all the important developments in theoretical physics over the last 20 years or more, the recent burgeoning of the renormalization group in statistical mechanics and in field theory has surely been the least well served by general reviews and introductions. Though exciting in their overall tenour and useful to the already active researcher, these have been exceptionally difficult of access even from immediately neighbouring fields.
We start with a simple introduction into the renormalization group (RG) in quantum field theory and give an overview of the renormalization group method. The third section is devoted to essential topics of the renorm-group use in the QFT. Here, some fresh results are included. Then we turn to the remarkable proliferation of the RG ideas into various fields of physics. The last section summarizes an impressive recent progress of the "QFT renormalization group" application in mathematical physics.
The successful calculation of critical exponents for continuous phase transitions is one of the main achievements of theoretical physics over the last quarter-century. This was achieved through the use of scaling and field-theoretic techniques which have since become standard equipment in many areas of physics, especially quantum field theory. This book provides a thorough introduction to these techniques. Continuous phase transitions are introduced, then the necessary statistical mechanics is summarized, followed by standard models, some exact solutions and techniques for numerical simulation
The stated goal of this book is to fill a perceived gap between undergraduate texts on critical phenomena and advanced texts on quantum field theory, in the general area of renormalization methods. It is debatable whether this gap really exists nowadays, as a number of books have appeared in which it is made clear that field-theoretic renormalization group methods are not the preserve of particle theory, and indeed are far more easily appreciated in the contexts of statistical and condensed matter physics. Nevertheless, this volume does have a fresh aspect to it, perhaps because of the author's background in fluid dynamics and turbulence theory, rather than through the more traditional migration from particle physics. The book begins at a very elementary level, in an effort to motivate the use of renormalization methods. This is a worthy effort, but it is likely that most of this section will be thought too elementary by readers wanting to get their teeth into the subject, while those for whom this section is apparently written are likely to find the later chapters rather challenging. The author's particular approach then leads him to emphasise the role of renormalized perturbation theory (rather than the renormalization group) in a number of problems, including non-linear systems and turbulence. Some of these ideas will be novel and perhaps even surprising to traditionally trained field theorists. Most of the rest of the book is on far more familiar territory: the momentum-space renormalization group, epsilon-expansion, and so on. This is standard stuff, and, like many other textbooks, it takes a considerable chunk of the book to explain all the formalism. As a result, there is only space to discuss the standard ϕ 4 field theory as applied to the Ising model (even the N -vector model is not covered) so that no impression is conveyed of the power and extent of all the applications and generalizations of the techniques. It is regrettable that so much space is spent on rather oversimplified and unrelated models in the first part of the book that, in the end, the reader is left breathless on the threshold of the really interesting material. Despite the earlier emphasis on the application of renormalization ideas in dynamics, in the end the full power of the field-theoretical approach is not applied to the obvious arena of dynamic critical phenomena (where there certainly is currently a gap in the literature) but to the Navier--Stokes equations. The development of the book is somewhat illogical in places. Mean field theory interrupts discussion of block spin methods and scaling arguments---the two are distinct approaches. The Callan--Symanzik equation is introduced before Feynman diagrams are explained, so that there is a hiatus before the actual results for the critical exponents can be found. I think this book is too broad in some respects, and too limited in others, to be a really useful textbook for a course on renormalization methods. Those who have learned these ideas either from field theory, or from nonlinear systems, will find it more rewarding for the sections covering the topics with which they are less familiar. For this reason alone, the book should at least find a place on most library reference shelves.