PHY-817: Advanced Statistical Physics

In this course, we will study the collective behavior of interacting many-body systems, leading us naturally to the topics of phase transitions, critical phenomena, and universality. We will explore these ideas using the tools of statistical field theory and the renormalization group. Topics will include Ginzburg-Landau theory, Goldstone modes, the perturbative renormalization group, epsilon and large N expansions, topological defects and the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition, non-linear sigma models, random systems and basic notions of conformal field theory.