Non Perturbative Renormalization

The notion of renormalization is at the core of several spectacular achievements of contemporary physics, and in the last years powerful techniques have been developed allowing to put renormalization on a firm mathematical basis. This book provides a self-consistent and accessible introduction to the sophisticated tools used in the modern theory of non-perturbative renormalization, allowing an unified and rigorous treatment of Quantum Field Theory, Statistical Physics and Condensed Matter models. In particular the first part of this book is devoted to Constructive Quantum Field Theory, providing a mathematical construction of models at low dimensions and discussing the removal of the ultraviolet and infrared cut-off, the verification of the axioms and the validity of Ward Identities with the relative anomalies. The second part is devoted to lattice 2D Statistical Physics, analyzing in particular the theory of universality in perturbed Ising models and the computation of the non-universal critical indices in Vertex or Ashkin-Teller models. Finally the third part is devoted to the analysis of complex quantum fluids showing Luttinger of Fermi liquid behavior, like the 1D or 2D Hubbard model.

Differential-algebraic equations (DAEs) provide an essential tool for system modeling and analysis within different fields of applied sciences and engineering. This book addresses modeling issues and analytical properties of DAEs, together with some applications in electrical circuit theory. Beginning with elementary aspects, the author succeeds in providing a self-contained and comprehensive presentation of several advanced topics in DAE theory, such as the full characterization of linear time-varying equations via projector methods or the geometric reduction of nonlinear systems. Recent results on singularities are extensively discussed. The book also addresses in detail differential-algebraic models of electrical and electronic circuits, including index characterizations and qualitative aspects of circuit dynamics. In particular, the reader will find a thorough discussion of the state/semistate dichotomy in circuit modeling. The state formulation problem, which has attracted much attention in the engineering literature, is cleverly tackled here as a reduction problem on semistate models.

This thesis presents the application of non-perturbative, or functional, renormalization group to study the physics of critical stationary states in systems out-of-equilibrium. Two different systems are thereby studied. The first system is the diffusive epidemic process, a stochastic process which models the propagation of an epidemic within a population. This model exhibits a phase transition peculiar to out-of-equilibrium, between a stationary state where the epidemic is extinct and one where it survives. The present study helps to clarify subtle issues about the underlying symmetries of this process and the possible universality classes of its phase transition. The second system is fully developed homogeneous isotropic and incompressible turbulence. The stationary state of this driven-dissipative system shows an energy cascade whose phenomenology is complex, with partial scale-invariance, intertwined with what is called intermittency. In this work, analytical expressions for the space-time dependence of multi-point correlation functions of the turbulent state in 2- and 3-D are derived. This result is noteworthy in that it does not rely on phenomenological input except from the Navier-Stokes equation and that it becomes exact in the physically relevant limit of large wave-numbers. The obtained correlation functions show how scale invariance is broken in a subtle way, related to intermittency corrections.

There have been many recent and important developments based on effective field theory and the renormalization group in atomic, condensed matter, nuclear and high-energy physics. These powerful and versatile methods provide novel approaches to study complex and strongly interacting many-body systems in a controlled manner. The six extensive lectures gathered in this volume combine selected introductory and interdisciplinary presentations focused on recent applications of effective field theory and the renormalization group to many-body problems in such diverse fields as BEC, DFT, extreme matter, Fermi-liquid theory and gauge theories. Primarily aimed at graduate students and junior researchers, they offer an opportunity to explore fundamental physics across subfield boundaries at an early stage in their careers.

Pade approximants (PA) have been widely applied in practically all areas of physics. This thesis focuses on developing PA as tools for both perturbative and non-perturbative quantum field theory (QFT).

The last decade has seen striking progress in the subject of renormalization in quantum field theory. The old subject of perturbative renormalization has been revived by the use of powerful methods such as multiscale decompositions; precise estimates have been added to the initial theorems on finiteness of renormalized perturbation theory, with new results on its large order asymptotics. Furthermore, constructive field theory has reached one of its major goals, the mathematically rigorous construction of some renormalizable quantum field theories. For these models one can in particular investigate rigorously the phenomenon of asymptotic freedom, which plays a key role in our current understanding of the interaction among elementary particles. However, until this book, there has been no pedagogical synthesis of these new developments. Vincent Rivasseau, who has been actively involved in them, now describes them for a wider audience. There are, in fact, common concepts at the heart of the progress on perturbative and constructive techniques. Exploiting these similarities, the author uses perturbative renormalization, which is the more widely known and conceptually simpler of the two cases, to explain the less familiar but more mathematically meaningful constructive renormalization. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The book discusses fundamental aspects of Quantum Field Theory and of Gauge theories, with attention to mathematical consistency. Basic issues of the standard model of elementary particles (Higgs mechanism and chiral symmetry breaking in quantum Chromodynamics) are treated without relying on the perturbative expansion and on instanton calculus.