Combinatorics and physics

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Combinatorial physics or physical combinatorics is the area of interaction between physics and combinatorics.

Contents

Overview

"Combinatorial Physics is an emerging area which unites combinatorial and discrete mathematical techniques applied to theoretical physics, especially Quantum Theory." [1]
"Physical combinatorics might be defined naively as combinatorics guided by ideas or insights from physics" [2]

Combinatorics has always played an important role in quantum field theory and statistical physics. [3] However, combinatorial physics only emerged as a specific field after a seminal work by Alain Connes and Dirk Kreimer, [4] showing that the renormalization of Feynman diagrams can be described by a Hopf algebra.

Combinatorial physics can be characterized by the use of algebraic concepts to interpret and solve physical problems involving combinatorics. It gives rise to a particularly harmonious collaboration between mathematicians and physicists.

Among the significant physical results of combinatorial physics, we may mention the reinterpretation of renormalization as a Riemann–Hilbert problem, [5] the fact that the Slavnov–Taylor identities of gauge theories generate a Hopf ideal, [6] the quantization of fields [7] and strings, [8] and a completely algebraic description of the combinatorics of quantum field theory. [9] An important example of applying combinatorics to physics is the enumeration of alternating sign matrix in the solution of ice-type models. The corresponding ice-type model is the six vertex model with domain wall boundary conditions.

See also

Related Research Articles

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Dirk Kreimer is a German physicist who pioneered the Hopf-algebraic approach to perturbative quantum field theory with Alain Connes and other co-authors. He is currently Humboldt professor at the department of mathematics of Humboldt University in Berlin, where he teaches the courses of Quantum Field Theory and Hopf Algebras and the Renormalization Group.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telephone number (mathematics)</span> Number of ways to pair up n objects

In mathematics, the telephone numbers or the involution numbers form a sequence of integers that count the ways n people can be connected by person-to-person telephone calls. These numbers also describe the number of matchings of a complete graph on n vertices, the number of permutations on n elements that are involutions, the sum of absolute values of coefficients of the Hermite polynomials, the number of standard Young tableaux with n cells, and the sum of the degrees of the irreducible representations of the symmetric group. Involution numbers were first studied in 1800 by Heinrich August Rothe, who gave a recurrence equation by which they may be calculated, giving the values

References

  1. 2007 International Conference on Combinatorial physics
  2. Physical Combinatorics, Masaki Kashiwara, Tetsuji Miwa, Springer, 2000, ISBN   0-8176-4175-0
  3. David Ruelle (1999). Statistical Mechanics, Rigorous Results. World Scientific. ISBN   978-981-02-3862-9.
  4. A. Connes, D. Kreimer, Renormalization in quantum field theory and the Riemann-Hilbert problem I, Commun. Math. Phys. 210 (2000), 249-273
  5. A. Connes, D. Kreimer, Renormalization in quantum field theory and the Riemann-Hilbert problem II, Commun. Math. Phys. 216 (2001), 215-241
  6. W. D. van Suijlekom, Renormalization of gauge fields: A Hopf algebra approach, Commun. Math. Phys. 276 (2007), 773-798
  7. C. Brouder, B. Fauser, A. Frabetti, R. Oeckl, Quantum field theory and Hopf algebra cohomology, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 37 (2004), 5895-5927
  8. T. Asakawa, M. Mori, S. Watamura, Hopf Algebra Symmetry and String Theory, Prog. Theor. Phys. 120 (2008), 659-689
  9. C. Brouder, Quantum field theory meets Hopf algebra, Mathematische Nachrichten 282 (2009), 1664-1690

Further reading

Combinatorics and statistical physics

Conference proceedings