Introduction to Statistical Field Theory

Edouard Brézin is Honorary Professor of Physics at the Ecole Polytechnique, and Emeritus Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris). A former President of the French Academy of Sciences, he is also a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society, and Academia Europaea.

• 1. A few well-known basic results; 2. Introduction: order parameters, broken symmetries; 3. Examples of physical situations modelled by the Ising model; 4. A few results about the Ising model; 5. High temperature and low temperature expansions; 6. Some geometric problems related to phase transitions; 7. Phenomenological description of the critical behaviour; 8. Mean field theory; 9. Beyond mean field theory; 10. Introduction to the renormalization group; 11. Renormalization group for the φ4 theory; 12. Renormalized theory; 13. Goldstone modes; 14. Large n; Index.

'… a concise but clear introduction to this now-classic material. … a magisterial introduction to the subject … an excellent example of what such lectures should be: fast-paced, succinct and clear … an excellent concise treatment of the modern theory of phase transitions and the renormalisation group by an expert in the field.' Contemporary Physics