Abstract Exact power series expansions for thermodynamic functions have in the past proved an invaluable aid to understanding the critical behaviour of insoluble models. Indeed, the first suggestions of power law singularities at criticality were based on such analyses. Immediately before the renormalization group was proposed, work using series expansions had led to a large body of evidence that exponents had universal properties, that they were the same above and below the critical temperature, and that mean-field values set in abruptly above four dimensions.
Abstract Exact power series expansions for thermodynamic functions have in the past proved an invaluable aid to understanding the critical behaviour of insoluble models. Indeed, the first suggestions of power law singularities at criticality were based on such analyses. Immediately before the renormalization group was proposed, work using series expansions had led to a large body of evidence that exponents had universal properties, that they were the same above and below the critical temperature, and that mean-field values set in abruptly above four dimensions.
A simple method is proposed for determining characteristic parameters of critical-point singularities from power-series expansions. It applies to a broad class of functions of physical interest and provides acceptable, simultaneous approximations to the critical point, exponent, and amplitude. Several examples of low- and high-temperature series expansions for thermodynamic properties of spin-(1/2) Ising models are studied, and quite accurate results are obtained for both close- and loose-packed arrays.
The use of series expansions to determine the nature of critical point singularities, especially the values of the critical exponents, is reviewed.Ratio techniques, based on extrapolation of the ratios of successive expansion coefficients, and Padé approximant methods, utilizing logarithmic derivatives, are explained, illustrated, and compared. Introduction.In this lecture I will survey briefly the phenomena observed near the critical point of a system.The range of behavior is very varied and we shall only examine one or two typical examples.The main aim will be to establish the existence of the so-called "critical point exponents" which describe the nature of the mathematical singularities exhibited by the different thermodynamic functions as the critical point is approached.The theory of these singularities may be developed via suitable statistical-mechanical models which, while caricatures of a realistic physical system, retain such vital features as the dimensionality of space, the finite range of the interactions, and certain basic symmetry properties.These models in turn are usually intractable as regards exact mathematical analysis.However, general methods can be developed which yield power series expansions for many functions of interest; frequently between 8 to 30 leading coefficients of such power series can be obtained.The problem is then a numerical one of extrapolating the series in such a way as to estimate the nature of the particular critical point singularity and the behavior of the function in its vicinity.I will show how this can, in favorable cases, be handled by studying the ratios of successive expansion coefficients.The method was pioneered by Domb and his coworkers, especially Sykes and Fisher [1], [2].The reliability of the techniques can be tested against the relatively few closed form mathematical results, in particular, Onsager's renowned solution of the two-dimensional Ising models [3].In less favorable examples this approach fails, and then, as first demonstrated by Baker [3], Padé approximants have a vital role to play.In a number of important cases the intelligent application of Padé approximants has been strikingly successful [3], [4].Such techniques have thus established a central place for themselves in the
Abstract Chapter 5 first recalls the importance of the concept of scale decoupling in physics. It then emphasizes that quantum field theory and the theory of critical phenomena have provided two examples where this concepts fails. To deal with such a situation, a new tool has been invented: the renormalization group. In the framework of effective quantum field theory, a perturbative renormalization group has been formulated. Its implementation has led to the discovery of fixed points as zeros of beta functions, and calculations of critical exponents of a class of macroscopic phase transitions in the form of Wilson–Fisher epsilon or fixed dimension expansions. These expansions being divergent, they could summed by methods based on the Borel transformation and the determination of the large order behaviour of perturbation theory.
Abstract Until the early 1970s all calculations of critical exponents were made either by exactly solving a model for its thermodynamic properties and then examining its behaviour in the critical regime (as with the Ising model in one and two dimensions) or by direct numerical simulations (as with the three-dimensional Ising model) or by extrapolation from approximate solutions which become invalid in the vicinity of a phase transition (high-temperature expansions, for example). However, in a now-famous paper published in 1966, Kadanoff presented arguments which, he maintained, would allow one to simplify calculations in the critical regime to the point at which critical exponents could be extracted, without ever working out the partition function for the problem. However, though Kadanoff’s ideas showed great physical intuition about the processes giving rise to critical phenomena, they lacked the mathematical precision which might have given one faith in his results.
Abstract Universal quantities near the phase transition of O(N) symmetric vector models, can be determined, in the framework of the (f2 )2 field theory, and the corresponding renormalization group (RG), in the form of perturbative series. The O(N) symmetric field theories describe, in particular for N = 0, the universal properties of the statistics of long polymers, for N = 1, the liquid–vapour transition, for N = 2, superfluid helium transition, and so on. Universal quantities have been calculated within two different schemes, the Wilson-Fisher ϵ = 4 − d expansion, and perturbative expansion at fixed dimensions 2 and 3 (as suggested by Parisi). In both cases, the series are divergent, and the expansion parameters are not small. In fixed dimensions smaller than 4, the series are proven to be Borel summable. For the ϵ expansion, there are reasons that the property is equally true, but a proof is lacking. With this assumption, in both cases, although the series are divergent, they define unique functions. Since the expansion parameters are not small, summation methods are then required to determine these functions. A specific summation method, based on a parametric Borel transformation and mapping, in which the knowledge of the large order behaviour has been incorporated, has been successfully applied to the series, and has led to a precise evaluation of critical exponents and other universal quantities.
Abstract In Chapter 14, the singular behavior of ferromagnetic systems with O(N) symmetry and short-range interactions, near a second order phase transition has been determined in the mean-field approximation, which is also a quasi-Gaussian approximation. The mean-field approximation predicts a set of universal properties, properties independent of the detailed structure of the microscopic Hamiltonian, the dimension of space, and, to a large extent, of the symmetry of systems. However, the leading corrections to the mean-field approximation, in dimensions smaller than or equal to four, diverge at the critical temperature, and the universal predictions of the mean-field approximation cannot be correct. Such a problem originates from the non-decoupling of scales and leads to the question of possible universality. In Chapter 9, the question has been answered in four dimensions using renormalization theory, and related renormalization group (RG) equations. Moreover, below four dimensions, in an expansion around the mean-field, the most singular terms near criticality can be also formally recovered from a continuum, low-mass φ4 field theory. More generally, following Wilson, to understand universality beyond the mean-field approximation, it is necessary to build a general renormalization group in the form of flow equations for effective Hamiltonians and to find fixed points of the flow equations. Near four dimensions, the flow equations can be approximated by the renormalization group of quantum field theory (QFT), and the fixed points and critical behaviours derived within the framework of the Wilson-Fisher ϵ expansion.