No Arabic abstract
Using the integral transformation, the field-theoretical Hamiltonian of the statistical field theory of fluids is obtained, along with the microscopic expressions for the coefficients of the Hamiltonian. Applying this approach to the liquid-vapor interface, we derive an explicit analytical expression for the surface tension in terms of temperature, density and parameters of inter-molecular potential. We also demonstrate that a clear physical interpretation may be given to the formal statistical field arising in the integral transformation - it may be associated with the one-body local microscopic potential. The results of the theory, lacking any ad-hoc or fitting parameters are in a good agreement with available simulation data.
The lectures provide a pedagogical introduction to the methods of CFT as applied to two-dimensional critical behaviour.
We propose an approach to a multiscale problem in the theory of thermotropic uniaxial nematics based on the method of statistical field theory. This approach enables us to relate the coefficients $A$, $B$, $C$, $L_1$ and $L_2$ of the Landau-de Gennes free energy for the isotropic-nematic phase transition to the parameters of a molecular model of uniaxial nematics, which we take to be a lattice gas model of nematogenic molecules interacting via a short-ranged potential. We obtain general constraints on the temperature and volume fraction of nematogens for the Landau-de Gennes theory to be stable against molecular orientation fluctuations at quartic order. In particular, for the case of a fully occupied lattice, we compute the values of the isotropic-nematic transition temperature and the order parameter discontinuity predicted by (i) a continuum approximation of the nearest-neighbor Lebwohl-Lasher model and (ii) a Lebwohl-Lasher-type model with a nematogenic interaction of finite range. We find that the predictions of (i) are in reasonably good agreement with known results of MC simulation.
We present the results of a percolation-like model that has been restricted compared to standard percolation models in the sense that we do not allow finite sized clusters to break up once they have formed. We calculate the critical exponents for this model and derive relationships between these exponents and those of standard percolation models. We argue that this restricted model represents a new universality class that is directly relevant to the critical physics as observed in quantum critical systems, and we describe under what conditions our percolation results can be applied to the observed temperature and field dependencies of the specific heat and susceptibility in such systems.
We consider three-dimensional statistical systems at phase coexistence in the half-volume with boundary conditions leading to the presence of an interface. Working slightly below the critical temperature, where universal properties emerge, we show how the problem can be studied analytically from first principles, starting from the degrees of freedom (particle modes) of the bulk field theory. After deriving the passage probability of the interface and the order parameter profile in the regime in which the interface is not bound to the wall, we show how the theory accounts at the fundamental level also for the binding transition and its key parameter.
Recently Mazenko and Das and Mazenko introduced a non-equilibrium field theoretical approach to describe the statistical properties of a classical particle ensemble starting from the microscopic equations of motion of each individual particle. We use this theory to investigate the transition from those microscopic degrees of freedom to the evolution equations of the macroscopic observables of the ensemble. For the free theory, we recover the continuity and Jeans equations of a collisionless gas. For a theory containing two-particle interactions in a canonical perturbation series, we find the macroscopic evolution equations to be described by the Born-Bogoliubov-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon hierarchy (BBGKY hierarchy) with a truncation criterion depending on the order in perturbation theory. This establishes a direct link between the classical and the field-theoretical approaches to kinetic theory that might serve as a starting point to investigate kinetic theory beyond the classical limits.