* Dates within the next 7 days are marked by a star.
Prof. Clément Hongler
Statistical Field Theory and the Ising Model
* Tuesday 24 April 2018, 15:15, D
The developments of statistical mechanics and of quantum field theory are among the major achievements of 20th century's science. In the second half of the century, these two subjects started to converge, resulting in some of the most remarkable successes of mathematical physics. At the heart of this convergence lies the conjecture that critical lattice models are connected, in the continuous limit, to conformally symmetric field theories. This conjecture has led to much insight into the nature of phase transitions and to beautiful formulae describing lattice models, which have remained unproven for decades.
In this talk, I will focus on the planar Ising model, perhaps the most studied lattice model, whose investigation has initiated much of the research in statistical mechanics. I will explain how, in the last ten years, we have developed tools to understand mathematically the emerging conformal symmetry of the model, and the connections with quantum field theory. This has led one to the proof of celebrated conjectures for the Ising correlations and for the description of the emerging random geometry. I will then explain how these tools have then yielded a rigorous formulation of the field theory describing this model, allowing one to make mathematical sense of the seminal ideas at the root of the subject of conformal field theory.
Colloquim
Departmental meeting
Tuesday 29 May 2018, 14:15, Coffee room
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