Further info
Critical phenomena and quantum field theory
A curated set of accessible background pages, reviews and lecture notes related to this research programme.
Wikipedia primers
Accessible starting points for the ideas that recur throughout this programme.
Critical phenomenaScaling, universality, critical exponents and diverging correlation lengths near continuous phase transitions.Conformal field theoryQuantum and statistical field theories with conformal symmetry, central to the description of many critical points.Renormalisation groupHow physical descriptions change with scale, and why fixed points organise universal critical behaviour.Conformal bootstrapA non-perturbative programme that constrains conformal field theories using symmetry, unitarity and crossing consistency.Topological quantum field theoryField theories whose observables capture topological information and which describe many topologically ordered phases.Monte Carlo methods in statistical physicsNumerical sampling methods used to study statistical systems and compare lattice calculations with continuum predictions.
Reviews and lecture notes
Longer introductions for readers who want to go beyond the overview pages.
Conformal Field Theory and Statistical Mechanics - John CardyPedagogical lectures on two-dimensional CFT and its application to critical statistical mechanics.The Conformal Bootstrap: Theory, Numerical Techniques, and ApplicationsA broad review of modern analytic and numerical conformal-bootstrap methods and their applications to critical systems.