Renormalization - Application in Statistical Physics

Application in Statistical Physics

As mentioned in the introduction, the methods of renormalization have been applied to Statistical Physics, namely to the problems of the critical behaviour near second-order phase transitions, in particular at fictitious spatial dimensions just below the number of 4, where the above-mentioned methods could even be sharpened (i.e., instead of "renormalizability" one gets "super-renormalizability"), which allowed extrapolation to the real spatial dimensionality for phase transitions, 3. Details can be found in the book of Zinn-Justin, mentioned below.

For the discovery of these unexpected applications, and working out the details, in 1982 the physics Nobel prize was awarded to Kenneth G. Wilson.

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