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advanced_notions:critical_exponent [2017/05/12 14:35] jakobadmin [Layman] |
advanced_notions:critical_exponent [2017/11/05 16:07] (current) jakobadmin ↷ Page moved from theories:statistical_mechanics:critical_exponent to advanced_notions:critical_exponent |
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<tabbox Why is it interesting?> | <tabbox Why is it interesting?> | ||
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- | For a nice introduction see: [[https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170223-bootstrap-geometry-theory-space/|Physicists Uncover Geometric ‘Theory Space’]] | ||
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<blockquote> | <blockquote> | ||
As condensed matter physicists were just discovering, when materials that are completely different at the microscopic level are tuned to the critical points at which they undergo phase transitions, they suddenly exhibit the same behaviors and can be described by the exact same handful of numbers. Heat iron to the critical temperature where it ceases to be magnetized, for instance, and the correlations between its atoms are defined by the same “critical exponents” that characterize water at the critical point where its liquid and vapor phases meet. These critical exponents are clearly independent of either material’s microscopic details, arising instead from something that both systems, and others in their “universality class,” have in common. Polyakov and other researchers wanted to find the universal laws connecting these systems. “And the goal, the holy grail of all that, was these numbers,” he said: Researchers wished to be able to calculate the critical exponents from scratch. | As condensed matter physicists were just discovering, when materials that are completely different at the microscopic level are tuned to the critical points at which they undergo phase transitions, they suddenly exhibit the same behaviors and can be described by the exact same handful of numbers. Heat iron to the critical temperature where it ceases to be magnetized, for instance, and the correlations between its atoms are defined by the same “critical exponents” that characterize water at the critical point where its liquid and vapor phases meet. These critical exponents are clearly independent of either material’s microscopic details, arising instead from something that both systems, and others in their “universality class,” have in common. Polyakov and other researchers wanted to find the universal laws connecting these systems. “And the goal, the holy grail of all that, was these numbers,” he said: Researchers wished to be able to calculate the critical exponents from scratch. | ||
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<tabbox Student> | <tabbox Student> | ||
- | <note tip> | + | The best explanation can be found in Critical point phenomena: universal physics at large length scales by Bruce, A.; Wallace, D. published in the book The new physics, edited by P. Davies |
- | In this section things should be explained by analogy and with pictures and, if necessary, some formulas. | + | |
- | </note> | + | |
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<tabbox Researcher> | <tabbox Researcher> | ||