3 - The renormalization group idea

Summary

In this chapter the basic concepts of the modern approach to equilibrium critical behaviour, conventionally grouped under the title ‘renormalization group’, are introduced. This terminology is rather unfortunate. The mathematical structure of the procedure, in the sense that it may be said to have any rigorous underpinnings, is certainly not that of a group. Neither is renormalization in quantum field theory an essential element, although it has an intimate connection with some formulations of the renormalization group. In fact, the renormalization group framework may be applied to problems quite unrelated to field theory. The origins of the name may be traced to the particle physics of the 1960s, when it was optimistically hoped that everything in fundamental physics might be explained in terms of symmetries and group theory, rather than dynamics. One of the earliest applications of renormalization group ideas, in fact, was to the rather esoteric subject of the high energy behaviour of renormalized quantum electrodynamics. It took the vision of K. Wilson to realise that these methods had a far wider field of application in the scaling theory of critical phenomena that was being formulated by Fisher, Kadanoff and others in the latter part of the decade. By then, however, the name had become firmly attached to the subject.

Not only are the words ‘renormalization’ and ‘group’ examples of unfortunate terminology, the use of the definite article ‘the’ which usually precedes them is even more confusing.