Reviews in Mathematical Physics

We consider statistical mechanics lattice models where the external field dependent partition function can be represented as a standard polymer system. Using this polymer representation and elementary complex analytic arguments, we obtain upper bounds and give a simple proof on the uniform (in n) exponential decay of the n-point truncated correlation function. We illustrate the method by applying it to the high and low temperature Ising model and to contour models.

Recently a new kind of approximation to continuum topological spaces has been introduced, the approximating spaces being partially ordered sets (posets) with a finite or at most a countable number of points. The partial order endows a poset with a nontrivial non-Hausdorff topology. Their ability to reproduce important topological information of the continuum has been the main motivation for their use in quantum physics. Posets are truly noncommutative spaces, or noncommutative lattices, since they can be realized as structure spaces of noncommutative C*-algebras. These noncommutative algebras play the same rôle as the algebra of continuous functions on a Hausdorff topological space M and can be thought of as algebras of operator valued functions on posets. In this article, we will review some mathematical results that establish a duality between finite posets and a certain class of C*-algebras. We will see that the algebras in question are all postliminal approximately finite dimensional (AF) algebras.

We investigate the notion of super-unitarity from a functional analytic point of view. For this purpose we consider examples of explicit realizations of a certain type of irreducible representations of low rank orthosymplectic Lie superalgebras which are super-unitary by construction. These are the so-called superholomorphic discrete series representations of osp(1/2,ℝ) and osp(2/2,ℝ) which we recently constructed using a ℤ₂–graded extension of the orbit method. It turns out here that super-unitarity of these representations is a consequence of the self-adjointness of two pairs of anticommuting operators which act in the Hilbert sum of two Hilbert spaces each of which carrying a holomorphic discrete series representation of su(1,1) such that the difference of the respective lowest weights is . At an intermediate stage, we show that the generators of the considered orthosymplectic Lie superalgebras can be realized either as matrix-valued first order differential operators or as first order differential superoperators. Even though the former realization is less convenient than the latter from the computational point of view, it has the advantage of avoiding the use of anticommuting Grassmann variables, and is moreover important for our analysis of super-unitarity. The latter emphasizes the fundamental role played by the atypical (or degenerate) superholomorphic discrete series representations of osp(2/2,ℝ) for the super-unitarity of the other representations considered in this work, and shows that the anticommuting (unbounded) self-adjoint operators mentioned above anticommute in a proper sense, thus connecting our work with the analysis of supersymmetric quantum mechanics.

We give an elementary introduction to the theory of algebraic and topological quantum groups (in the spirit of S. L. Woronowicz). In particular, we recall the basic facts from Hopf (*-) algebra theory, theory of compact (matrix) quantum groups and the theory of their actions on compact quantum spaces. We also provide the most important examples, including the classification of quantum SL(2)-groups, their real forms and quantum spheres. We also consider quantum SL_q(N)-groups and quantum Lorentz groups.

The naive perturbation expansion for many-fermion systems is infrared divergent. One can remove these divergences by introducing counterterms. To do this without changing the model, one has to solve an inversion equation. We call this procedure Fermi surface renormalization (FSR). Whether or not FSR is possible depends on the regularity properties of the fermion self-energy. When the Fermi surface is nonspherical, this regularity problem is rather nontrivial. Using improved power counting at all orders in perturbation theory, we have shown sufficient differentiability to solve the FSR equation for a class of models with a non-nested, non-spherical Fermi surface. I will first motivate the problem and give a definition of FSR, and then describe the combination of geometric and graphical facts that lead to the improved power counting bounds. These bounds also apply to the four-point function. They imply that only ladder diagrams can give singular contributions to the four-point function.