285160 Modern Approaches to Critical Phenomena (V) (SoSe 2026)

This lecture focuses on the intricate phenomena–so-called critical phenomena–that occur in systems near continuous phase transitions. These phenomena include, most prominently, scaling, universality, and critical slowing down, with phenomenological consequences such as critical opalescence in fluids. Well-known examples are the liquid-gas critical point and the Curie transition in ferromagnets. The theoretical explanation for these phenomena is provided by the renormalization group (RG). In this lecture, we will mainly focus on one of its modern formulations, the functional renormalization group (FRG).

Topics:
1) Mean-field theory of critical phenomena
2) Landau-Ginzburg theory
3) Functional renormalization group approach to critical phenomena, universality
4) Dynamic critical phenomena

See https://moodle.uni-bielefeld.de/course/view.php?id=14184 for lecture notes and problem sheets.

Literaturangaben

Goldenfeld, Lectures on Phase Transitions and the Renormalization Group (1992)
Täuber, Critical Dynamics (2014)
Cardy, Scaling and Renormalization in Statistical Physics (2002)