2007/11/18 by Moshe Schwartz, Eytan Katzav
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1742-5468/2008/04/p04023
published as J. Stat. Mech. P04023 (2008) · 17 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to a focus issue of JSTAT on Disorder, Fluctuations and Universality dedicated to Thomas Nattermann
arxiv created 2007/11/18 · openalex publication_date 2008/04/21 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
In recent years we have witnessed a growing interest in various non-equilibrium systems described in terms of stochastic nonlinear field theories. In some of those systems, like KPZ and related models, the interesting behavior is in the strong coupling regime, which is inaccessible by traditional perturbative treatments such as dynamical renormalization group (DRG). A useful tool in the study of such systems is the self-consistent expansion (SCE), which might be said to generate its own 'small parameter'. The self-consistent expansion (SCE) has the advantage that its structure is just that of a regular expansion, the only difference is that the simple system around which the expansion is performed is adjustable. The purpose of this paper is to present the method in a simple and understandable way that hopefully will make it accessible to a wider public working on non-equilibrium statistical physics.