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arXiv:hep-ph/0110012 · Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields

Dynamics near the critical point: The hot renormalization group in quantum field theory

D. Boyanovsky, Hector J. de Vega

Published Apr 9, 2002• 12 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The perturbative approach to the description of long-wavelength excitations at high temperature breaks down near the critical point of a second order phase transition. We study the dynamics of these excitations in a relativistic scalar field theory at and near the critical point via a renormalization group approach at high temperature and an $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$ expansion in $d=5\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\epsilon}$ space-time dimensions. The long-wavelength physics is determined by a nontrivial fixed point of the renormalization group. At the critical point we find that the dispersion relation and width of quasiparticles of momentum p are ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{p}\ensuremath{\sim}{p}^{z}$ and ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}_{p}\ensuremath{\sim}(z\ensuremath{-}1){\ensuremath{\omega}}_{p},$ respectively, and the group velocity of quasiparticles ${v}_{g}\ensuremath{\sim}{p}^{z\ensuremath{-}1}$ vanishes in the long-wavelength limit at the critical point. Away from the critical point for $T\ensuremath{\gtrsim}{T}_{c}$ we find ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{p}\ensuremath{\sim}{\ensuremath{\xi}}^{\ensuremath{-}z}[1+(p\ensuremath{\xi}{)}^{2z}{]}^{1/2}$ and ${\ensuremath{\Gamma}}_{p}\ensuremath{\sim}(z\ensuremath{-}1){\ensuremath{\omega}}_{p}(p\ensuremath{\xi}{)}^{2z}/[1+(p\ensuremath{\xi}{)}^{2z}]$ with $\ensuremath{\xi}$ the finite temperature correlation length $\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremath{\propto}|T\ensuremath{-}{T}_{c}{|}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\nu}}.$ The new dynamical exponent z results from anisotropic renormalization in the spatial and time directions. For a theory with $O(N)$ symmetry we find $z=1+\ensuremath{\epsilon}{(N+2)/(N+8)}^{2}+\mathcal{O}({\ensuremath{\epsilon}}^{2}).$ This dynamical critical exponent describes a new universality class for dynamical critical phenomena in quantum field theory. Critical slowing down, i.e., a vanishing width in the long-wavelength limit, and the validity of the quasiparticle picture emerge naturally from this analysis.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.65.085038

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This book provides an elementary introduction to the notions of continuum limit and universality in statistical systems with a large number of degrees of freedom. The existence of a continuum limit requires the appearance of correlations at large distance, a situation that is encountered in second order phase transitions, near the critical temperature. In this context, the book emphasizes the role of gaussian distributions and their relations with the mean field approximation and Landau′s theory of critical phenomena. The book shows that quasi-gaussian or mean-field approximations cannot describe correctly phase transitions in three space dimensions. The book assigns this difficulty to the coupling of very different physical length scales, even though the systems we will consider have only local, that is, short range, interactions. To analyze the unusual situation, a new concept is required: the renormalization group, whose fixed points allow understanding the universality of physical properties at large distance, beyond mean-field theory. In the continuum limit, critical phenomena can be described by quantum field theories. In this framework, the renormalization group is directly related to the renormalization process; that is, the necessity to cancel the infinities that arise in straightforward formulations of the theory. The book discusses the renormalization group in the context of various relevant field theories. This leads to proofs of universality and to efficient tools for calculating universal quantities in a perturbative framework. Finally, the book constructs a general functional renormalization group, which can be used when perturbative methods are inadequate.
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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.
In this central and essential chapter, we develop the dynamic renormalization group approach to time-dependent critical phenomena. Again, we base our exposition on the simple O ( n )-symmetric relaxational models A and B; the generalization to other dynamical systems is straightforward. We begin with an analysis of the infrared and ultraviolet singularities appearing in the dynamic perturbation expansion. Although we are ultimately interested in the infrared critical region, we first take care of the ultraviolet divergences. Below and at the critical dimension d c = 4, only a finite set of Feynman diagrams carries ultraviolet singularities, which we evaluate by means of the dimensional regularization prescription, and then eliminate via multiplicative as well as additive renormalization (the latter takes into account the fluctuation-induced shift of the critical temperature). The renormalization group equation then permits us to explore the ensuing scaling behavior of the correlation and vertex functions of the renormalized theory upon varying the arbitrary renormalization scale. Of fundamental importance is the identification of an infrared-stable renormalization group fixed point, which describes scale invariance and hence allows the derivation of the critical power laws in the infrared limit from the renormalization constants determined in the ultraviolet regime. This program is explicitly carried through for the relaxational models A and B. For model B, we derive a scaling relation connecting the dynamic exponent to the Fisher exponent η . The critical exponents ν , η , and z are computed to first non-trivial order in an ∊ expansion around the upper critical dimension d c = 4.
We apply Renormalization Group techniques to the Real Time formulation of thermal field theory. Due to the separation between the T = 0 and the T = 0 parts of the propagator in this formalism, one can derive exact evolution equations for the Green functions describing the effect of integrating out thermal fluctuations of increasing wavelengths, the initial conditions being the renormalized Green functions of the T = 0 theory. As a first application, we study the phase transition for the real scalar theory, computing the order of the transition, the critical temperature, and critical exponents, in different approximations to the evolution equations for the scalar potential. CERN-TH/96-23 The dynamics of a second order, or weakly first order, phase transition is governed by long wavelength fluctuations of the order parameter. These fluctuations, whose length scale is much larger than the inverse temperature of the system, are essentially classical, since the
We show by a detailed study of the mean-field approximation, the Gaussian approximation, the perturbation expansion, and the field-theoretic renormalization-group analysis of a φ3φ^{3}φ3 theory that its instability fixed points with their associated instability exponents are quite probably relevant to the scaling and universality behavior exhibited by the first-order phase transitions in a field-driven scalar ϕ4ϕ^4ϕ4 model below its critical temperature near their instability points. Finite-time scaling and leading corrections to scaling are considered. We also show that the instability exponents of the first-order phase transitions equal those of the Yang--Lee edge singularity and employ the latter to improve our estimates of the former. The outcomes agree well with existent numerical results.