Disordered Systems and the Functional Renormalization Group: A Pedagogical Introduction

In this article, we review basic facts about disordered systems, especially the existence of many metastable states and and the resulting failure of dimensional reduction. Besides techniques based on the Gaussian variational method and replica-symmetry breaking (RSB), the functional renormalization group (FRG) is the only general method capable of attacking strongly disordered systems. We explain the basic ideas of the latter method and why it is difficult to implement. We finally review current progress for elastic manifolds in disorder.