Related papers: Idealizations and analogies
In the 1960's, four famous scaling relations were developed which relate the six standard critical exponents describing continuous phase transitions in the thermodynamic limit of statistical physics models. They are well understood at a…
The results of the renormalization group are commonly advertised as the existence of power law singularities near critical points. The classic predictions are often violated and logarithmic and exponential corrections are treated on a…
It is widely believed that theory is useful in physics because it describes simple systems and that strictly empirical phenomenological approaches are necessary for complex biological and social systems. Here we prove based upon an analysis…
The critical behavior of driven lattice gas models has been studied for decades as a paradigm to explore nonequilibrium phase transitions and critical phenomena. However, there exists a long-standing controversy in the universality classes…
It is well known that the imposition of a constraint can transform the properties of critical systems. Early work on this phenomenon by Essam and Garelick, Fisher, and others, focused on the effects of constraints on the leading critical…
The tremendous popular success of Chaos Theory shares some common points with the not less fortunate Relativity: they both rely on a misunderstanding. Indeed, ironically , the scientific meaning of these terms for mathematicians and…
Quantum interference phenomena are widely viewed as posing a challenge to the classical worldview. Feynman even went so far as to proclaim that they are the only mystery and the basic peculiarity of quantum mechanics. Many have also argued…
We propose a parameterization for contributions of an infinite set of diagrams (bubble chains) into physical observables represented as integrals of running coupling constant over the finite region in momentum space. The perturbation theory…
Interference phenomena are often claimed to resist classical explanation. However, such claims are undermined by the fact that the specific aspects of the phenomenology upon which they are based can in fact be reproduced in a noncontextual…
Continuous phase transitions are catalogued into universality classes, families of systems having identical values of all the exponents governing the critical behaviour of their different physical properties. Numerical simulations have been…
Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in…
After having introduced the notion of universality in statistical mechanics and its importance for our comprehension of the macroscopic behavior of interacting systems, I review recent progress in the understanding of the scaling limit of…
A coupled phase-oscillator model consists of phase-oscillators, each of which has the natural frequency obeying a probability distribution and couples with other oscillators through a given periodic coupling function. This type of model is…
We study the question of whether two frames of a given physical theory are equivalent or not in the presence of quantum corrections. By using field theory arguments we claim that equivalence is broken in the presence of anomalous symmetries…
We analyze critical points that can be induced in glassy systems by the presence of constraints. These critical points are predicted by the Mean Field Thermodynamic approach and they are precursors of the standard glass transition in…
Equilibrium and nonequilibrium systems exhibit power-law singularities close to their critical and bifurcation points respectively. A recent study has shown that biochemical nonequilibrium models with positive feedback belong to the…
Different perturbation theory treatments of the Ginzburg-Landau phase transition model are discussed. This includes a criticism of the perturbative renormalization group (RG) approach and a proposal of a novel method providing critical…
In this essay a critical review of present conceptual problems in current cosmology is provided from a more philosophical point of view. In essence, a digression on how could philosophy help cosmologists in what is strictly their…
Many systems involve numerous interacting parts and the whole system can have properties that the individual parts do not. I take this novelty as the defining characteristic of an emergent property. Other characteristics associated with…
Generic higher character Lifshitz critical behaviors are described using field theory and $\epsilon_{L}$-expansion renormalization group methods. These critical behaviors describe systems with arbitrary competing interactions. We derive the…