The renormalization group (RG) has nowadays achieved the status of a meta-theory, which is a theory about theories. The theory of the RG consists of a set of concepts and methods which can be used to understand phenomena in many different ?elds of physics, ranging from quantum ?eld theory over classical statistical mechanics to nonequilibrium phenomena. RG methods are particularly useful to understand phenomena where ?uctuations involving many different length or time scales lead to the emergence of new collective behavior in complex many-body systems. In view of the diversity of ?elds where RG methods have been successfully applied, it is not surprising that a variety of apparently different implementations of the RG idea have been proposed. Unfortunately, this makes it somewhat dif?cult for beginners to learn this technique. For example, the ?eld-theoretical formulation of the RG idea looks at the ?rst sight rather different from the RG approach pioneered by Wilson, the latter being based on the concept of the effective action which is ite- tively calculated by successive elimination of the high-energy degrees of freedom. Moreover, the Wilsonian RG idea has been implemented in many different ways, depending on the particular problem at hand, and there seems to be no canonical way of setting up the RG procedure for a given problem.

Covering the elementary aspects of the physics of phases transitions and the renormalization group, this popular book is widely used both for core graduate statistical mechanics courses as well as for more specialized courses. Emphasizing understanding and clarity rather than technical manipulation, these lectures de-mystify the subject and show precisely "how things work." Goldenfeld keeps in mind a reader who wants to understand why things are done, what the results are, and what in principle can go wrong. The book reaches both experimentalists and theorists, students and even active researchers, and assumes only a prior knowledge of statistical mechanics at the introductory graduate level.Advanced, never-before-printed topics on the applications of renormalization group far from equilibrium and to partial differential equations add to the uniqueness of this book.

Quantum field theory has had a profound influence on mathematics, and on geometry in particular. However, the notorious difficulties of renormalization have made quantum field theory very inaccessible for mathematicians. This provides complete mathematical foundations for the theory of perturbative quantum field theory, based on Wilson's ideas of low-energy effective field theory and on the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism.

This text provides a thoroughly modern graduate-level introduction to the theory of critical behaviour. It begins with a brief review of phase transitions in simple systems, then goes on to introduce the core ideas of the renormalisation group.

This Brief presents an introduction to the theory of the renormalization group in the context of quantum field theories of relevance to particle physics. Emphasis is placed on gaining a physical understanding of the running of the couplings. The Wilsonian version of the renormalization group is related to conventional perturbative calculations with dimensional regularization and minimal subtraction. An introduction is given to some of the remarkable renormalization group properties of supersymmetric theories.

This introduction to the renormalization group, an edited and corrected second edition, discusses examples from diverse areas of physics. Designed for a one-semester course for advanced graduate students, the treatment requires a solid background in classical mechanics, statistical mechanics, and quantum mechanics. The text begins with an examination of self-similarity and scale invariance, followed by chapters on the renormalization group approaches to chaos and percolation, renormalization group and critical phenomena, and an extensive treatment of the Ising model. Additional topics include mean field theory and the Gaussian fixed point, the spherical model and the 1/n expansion, the two-dimensional X-Y model and the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition, and other subjects. Each chapter is augmented by problems and references, and three helpful Appendixes supplement the text. AUTHOR: R. J. Creswick is Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of South Carolina.