Physics 212: Statistical mechanics II, Fall 2006 Lecture XVII

This lecture contains some fairly sophisticated notions from eld theory, but for the case of the Gaussian model (related to mean-eld theory) the predictions can be understood in terms of power-counting: the change in a quantity under rescaling can be understood by considering what its units should be. Let us return to Landau theory. So far we understand the consequences of rescaling maps near a critical point, but have few ways to construct such maps. The best way is to work with continuum theories, as introduced in this lecture. We assume that near the critical point, the coarse-grained spin m(r) varies only slowly for the lowest-energy congurations. (Note that here m will have dimensionality L(2d)/2 , so it is not a density.) Hence we guess that the Gibbs free energy takes the Landau form, 1 1 (m(r), H(r)) = | m(r)|2 m(r)h(r) + r0 m(r)2 + s0 m(r)3 + u0 m(r)4 + . . . . (1) 2 2 The meaning of this is that the partition function can eectively be written in terms of an integral over m alone: d Z(T, H) C (Dm(r))e d r (m,H) . (2) This diers slightly from our previous denition in that now has been absorbed into for convenience below: dd r should be a dimensionless number. Consider only the quadratic terms in Landau theory, which is called the Gaussian model. This theory is exactly solvable even beyond mean-eld theory, since we know how to do Gaussian integrals. It is also the starting point for the interacting theory obtained by keeping the quartic term. That much harder theory is known as 4 theory, as the eld m is often written as . It is believed that 4 theory is in the same universality class as the Ising model, and its critical exponents have been calculated in great detail in a number of dierent limits. In fact the modern way of calculating Ising model critical exponents, or O(n) model exponents in general, is to work with 4 theory rather than on a lattice. Our main result in what follows will be an understanding of when the Gaussian model is good enough, and when the full 4 theory is necessary. We now introduce a very powerful way of understanding which operators are relevant or irrelevant in a continuum theory like Landau theory. In particular, we want to ask whether the neglected m4 , m6 , . . . terms are relevant or irrelevant at the Gaussian xed point (b = 0). This will also motivate the idea of scaling dimension of a eld, which is quite important in modern applications of eld theory. In this lecture we just present the basic idea without justication; the justication will come in the next lecture. Lets switch to the historical notation of writing for m. With just the ( )2 term in the exponent, we want a rescaling-invariant xed point: then the dimension (number of inverse powers of length) of the exponent should be zero, which we write as ( )2 dd r = 0. (3)

Each derivative carries a spatial dimension 1, and each spatial dimension in the integrand contains a spatial dimension 1, so the scaling dimension of the free eld alone must be [] = (d 2)/2. For example, in d = 2, is dimensionless, while in d = 4, has units of inverse length. 1

Now we can ask about the scaling dimensions of the other terms in the action: the mass term is 2 dd r = 2. The interaction term (this is particle-physics terminology for the fourth-order term) is 4 dd r = 2(d 2) d = d 4. (5) (4)

This suggests again that somehow four dimensions is connected to the validity of the Gaussian model. The above numbers agree with our expectation that a mass term is always relevant (it greatly changes the long-distance physics by introducing a cuto for correlations), while the 4 term is only relevant below four dimensions. (Technical note: remember, however, that we had to assume an m4 term in order to get critical exponents even at the MFT level. The m4 term above four dimensions is referred to as a dangerously irrelevant operator, because even though it does not modify critical exponents in this case, it is needed to ensure a well-dened phase on the ordered side.) Let us look back at the idea of what was just done. We identied some terms (in this case just one term, the ( )2 term) as part of the xed-point action. Then the scaling dimensions of the elds at this xed-point were calculated by power-counting, which works here since the theory is a simple free theory. Finally, the scaling dimensions of the elds were used to argue which terms were relevant and irrelevant at this xed point. Our previous rescaling transformations were dened on lattices and had some integer rescaling factor b. We now continue working with the Gaussian model in order to understand how RG transformations can be dened in the continuum, leading to the notion of an RG ow. We will also understand when interaction terms like 4 or 6 are relevant at the free (Gaussian) xed point. Let us say a bit more about the measure on functions m(r). The assumption will be that the integration is simple in Fourier space: (note incidentally that mk = m since m(r) is real) for k each component mk mk = = ( dmk ) mk mk eE ( k dmk ) eE 2 dmk dmk mk mk e(k +r0 )mk mk /2 1 2 . (k2 +r0 )mk mk /2 k + r0 dmk dmk e
k

(6)

Note that in an expression like the above, there are two integrals: there is the integral over the mk , and an integral over space in the exponent. Fourier-transforming back to the real-space correlator gives the forms we previously calculated in lattice mean-eld theory (exercise). At the critical point, r0 = 0 and in real space we have (writing henceforth for m)
|k|=a1

(r)(0) =
|k|=0

dd k

eikr 1 = d2 k2 r

|u|=a1 /r |u|=0

dd u

eiuz . u2

(7)

What is this a1 that has been introduced? Recall that in real space we had a short-distance cuto a resulting from the lattice spacing. In Fourier space, that corresponds to having a large-momentum cuto a1 to regularize the large-momentum (ultraviolet) divergence in the above. (There is 2

no infrared divergence as long as d > 2, which we assume for now.) In the original appearance of renormalization in high-energy physics, such cutos were introduced as a way of regularizing divergent integrals; then by a complicated cancellation procedure known as renormalization, the cuto could be eliminated in the calculation of experimentally relevant quantities. The modern approach is instead to look at how the physics changes under rescaling of the cuto a ab, where b is the rescaling parameter (which we introduced before on lattices). Now we can explain where the notion of scaling dimension mentioned last time comes from: Denition: For a local quantity like (x), where local means that it is evaluated at a single point, the scaling dimension = [] at a critical point gives the exponent of the correlation of : (x)(0) x2 . For the Gaussian model, the above calculation of the correlation function then gives [] = = d2 . 2 (9) (8)

How does this language connect with our previous denition of critical exponents? Recall that the critical exponent was dened to give the exponent of the magnetic correlations at criticality, relative to the Coulomb law: hence we immediately have = 2 (d 2), and for the Gaussian model = 0. The correlator of (0) so falls o as a higher power of x: 1 , xd (11) (10)

(x)

d , (12) 2 as we guessed above based on power counting. For a product of elds in a Gaussian theory, the scaling dimension of the product is the sum of the scaling dimension of its components, so [2 ] = d 2, for example. Surprisingly this does not hold in general. [ ] = Finally, we want to consider terms where local elds are integrated over space. Denition: The scaling dimension of a term dd xF (x) is [ dd xF (x)] = [F ] d. (14) (13)

It is important to stress that the simple rules of power-counting to determine relevance or irrelevance depend crucially on the Gaussian nature of the free xed point. Mathematically, powercounting works because of what is known as Wicks theorem for Gaussian integrals: it says that the expectation of any product of the elds can be reduced to two-point expectation functions, which are given by Gaussian integrals. This does not hold for an interacting theory, which is 3

why interacting theories can have anomalous dimensions as we discussed earlier: we will give an example in a moment. The key is that in interacting theories with anomalous dimensions, the scaling dimension as dened through the correlation function above need not be the same as the engineering dimension dened above. The scaling dimension of the term [ 2 dd x] = 2 gives the thermal eigenvalue of the RG ow: yt = 2. (15) We can show that the magnetic exponents in mean-eld theory are related to the scaling dimension of the magnetic eld operator at the Gaussian xed point. The magnetic eld couples linearly to , since the added perturbation to the critical action is dd x h(x). The scaling dimension of this term is therefore (h) = d2 d d = 1 . 2 2 (17) (16)

Therefore yh = d + 1, and the full list of critical exponents in the Gaussian model follows: = 2 2 d/2, = (d 2)/4, = 1, = (d + 2)/(d 2), = 1/2, = 0. Note rst of all that the Gaussian model exponents match those of mean-eld theory in d = 4, and incidentally that there seems to be a problem in 2d, since there = . Rules for power-counting around the free (Gaussian) xed point: Rule 1 All the terms that appear in the xed-point action should be marginal, as they are scale-invariant. Rule 2 Relevant terms have negative overall scaling dimension, while irrelevant terms have positive scaling dimension. To understand why this works, look back at the Landau free energy in terms of , and introduce powers of the short-distance cuto a in order to make the coecient of each term dimensionless; rescaling to eliminate as well gives Z= (D) e
dd x [ 1 ( )2 +a2 t2 +ad4 u4 +a2d6 v6 +ad/21 h] 2

(18)

Why power-counting works: This will serve as an introduction to rescaling transformations on the continuum theory. We want to ask whether, if the coecients of a perturbation such as 4 is initially small, it increases or decreases under rescaling, in order to determine why the powercounting calculation above works. If we rescale a by a factor b, so that the new length is a = ba, then the coecients must be rescaled accordingly to keep the free energy the same: t u v h = = = = b2 t b4d u b62d v bd/2+1 h.

(19)

(The result above is a guess that will be veried when we dene the continuum (momentum-shell) RG precisely in the next lecture.) The sign in the above may be a bit puzzling. Consider the term with coecient t, for example. Since 2 dd x has length dimension 2, upon a rescaling this term will pick up a factor b2 . Then absorbing this factor b2 in the coecient t by setting t t = b2 t 4

gives us an equivalent action, dened at a new length scale b times larger than the original length scale. We can see immediately from this result that above 4 dimensions the quartic term u is irrelevant, and above 3 dimensions the term v is irrelevant (at the free point, i.e., if somehow u is tuned to zero, as at a tricritical point). We conclude from this that the upper critical dimension for the tricritical point is d = 3. Note that in this continuum formalism there is no reason to x b an integer. As a check on the above, note that it makes sense that the mass term r0 2 = at2 should be relevant, since the correlation functions at long distance are changed drastically if a nonzero r0 is added: at r0 = 0 the correlation functions are power-law, while with nonzero r0 they fall o exponentially. Note that for the Gaussian model there are no anomalous dimensions, and the scaling dimension of each operator is equal to its engineering dimension, that is, its length units if the Hamiltonian is assumed to have zero overall length dimensions. In more detail, consider the critical Hamiltonian dd x 1 ( )2 . 2 (20)

The eld should have dimension (length)(d2)/2 in order for the critical Hamiltonian to have zero overall length dimension. With anomalous dimensions, a elds engineering dimension may include a nonintegral power of the microscopic length scale a, so that even though the engineering dimension is a simple integer or half-integer, the true scaling dimension need not be so simple. In the next lecture well look at an interacting xed point, in order to verify the breakdown of power-counting and the existence of anomalous dimensions. The example we use is the 2D Ising model since its critical exponents are known exactly. (One of our last topics in classical static critical phenomena will be how anomalous dimensions emerge perturbatively just below the upper critical dimension, but for now we x d = 2 and consider the known results for 2D Ising.) It seems quite surprising that 2[] = [2 ] for the 2D Ising model, as explained in the next lecture. The reason why scaling dimensions added simply around the free point was Wicks theorem, as special feature of Gaussian integrals: correlations of 2n elds give sums over all possible pairings of the elds, so for 4 elds, for example: (x1 )(x2 )(x3 )(x4 ) = (x1 )(x2 ) (x3 )(x4 ) + (x1 )(x3 ) (x2 )(x4 ) + (x2 )(x3 ) (x1 )(x4 ) .

(21)

Then, in order to show that for the Gaussian model, [2 ] = 2[], it just remains to apply Wicks theorem to the correlator ((x)2 2 )((0)2 2 ) . (22)

In general multiple-point correlation functions do not simply reduce to pair correlations, and are very dicult to evaluate in interacting theories. The only interacting theories that are completely understood are in two dimensions, where conformal eld theory is an extremely powerful technique to understand even interacting theories.