The renormalization-group approach is largely responsible for the considerable success which has been achieved in the last ten years in developing a complete quantitative theory of phase transitions. Before, there was a useful physical picture of phase transitions, but a general method for making accurate quantitative predictions was lacking. Existent theories, such as the mean-field theory of Landau, sometimes reproduce phase diagrams reliably but were known to fail qualitatively near critical points, where the critical behavior is particularly interesting be cause of its universal...
The renormalization-group approach is largely responsible for the considerable success which has been achieved in the last ten years in developing a c...
