Rev. of morden phys. 20世纪物理学回顾Scaling,universality and renormalization Three pillars of morden critical phenomena.pdf

Scaling, universality, and renormalization: Three pillars of modern critical phenomena H. Eugene Stanley Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215 This brief overview is designed to introduce some of the advances that have occurred in our understanding of phase transitions and critical phenomena. The presentation is organized around three simple questions: (i) What are the basic phenomena under consideration? (ii) Why do we care? (iii) What do we actually do? To answer the third question, the author shall briefly review scaling, universality, and renormalization, three of the many important themes which have served to provide the framework of much of our current understanding of critical phenomena. The style is that of a colloquium, not that of a mini-review article. [S0034-6861(99)02902-5] I. THE FIRST QUESTION: ‘‘WHAT ARE CRITICAL A third reason is awe. We wonder how it is that spins PHENOMENA?’’ ‘‘know’’ to align so suddenly as T T . How can the c spins propagate their correlations so extensively Suppose we have a simple bar magnet. We know it is throughout the entire system that M 0 and T ? a ferromagnet because it is capable of picking up thumb- tacks, the number of which is called the order parameter M . As we heat this system, M decreases and eventually, at a certain critical temperature Tc , it reaches zero: no more thumbtacks remain! In fact, the tran