PHYS-8803	School of Physics

RENORMALIZATION THEORY:
Critical phenomena, fractals and all that jazz

INSTRUCTOR: Predrag Cvitanović
TIME: Fall semester 2006 - Tue, Thu 9:35-10:55am in Howey W505

TEACHING METHOD: Two lectures per week, homework sets, and a term project or a final exam.
START: Tue, Aug 22, 2006
COURSE HOMEPAGE: www.cns.gatech.edu/~predrag/courses/PHYS-8803-06

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

The renormalization theory is one of the crown jewels of theoretical physics. We start by reviewing the Landau theory of second-order phase transitions and then discuss mean-field theory, fluctuations, scaling theory, and critical phenomena. We then introduce basic concepts of field theory, perturbation theory (Feynman diagrammatic methods), and develop the Kadanoff-Wilson renormalization group, the Feigenbaum theory of transitions to chaos, and fractal phenomena measured in condensed matter experiments.

The course complements (but does not require as a prerequisite) J. Bellissard's Fall 2006 statistical mechanics course, as well as other other graduate condensed matter and field theory courses.

TEXTS: