COLLOQUIUM DFA: GIUSEPPE MUSSARDO

Title: How to solve it: a gentle introduction to exactly solvable models in statistical field theories
Speaker: Giuseppe Mussardo - SISSA
Where and when: 21-03-2024 | 15:00 | Aula Rostagni

Poster

URL website :https://indico.dfa.unipd.it/event/947/

Abstract:

Statistical field theory, an important subject of theoretical physics that has undergone formidable progress in recent years. Most of the attractiveness of this field comes from its profound interdisciplinary nature and its mathematical elegance; it sets outstanding challenges in several scientific areas, such as statistical mechanics, quantum field theory (QFT) and mathematical physics. Statistical field theory deals, in short, with the behaviour of classical or quantum systems consisting of an enormous number of degrees of freedom. Those systems have different phases, and the rich spectrum of the phenomena they give rise introduces several questions: What is their ground state in each phase? What is the nature of the phase transitions? What is the spectrum of the excitations? Can we compute the correlation functions of their order parameters? Can we estimate their finite size effects? The aim of the seminar is to show how one can reach a general understanding of the critical phenomena on the basis of a few physical principles, which give rise to the remarkable properties of Conformal Field Theory and S-Matrix Bootstrap Principle. We discuss in particular the exact solution of the 2d Ising model in a magnetic field and its relation to the exceptional algebra E8.