The relation between ferromagnets, Phi4 and non-linear sigma model

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
0 replies · 3K views
Aethermimicus
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
TL;DR
It is possible to describe the long-distance behavior of the Heisenberg ferromagnets in two different ways:the phi4 theory which corresponds to an expansion around mean-field thoery and the nonlinear sigma model obtained by low-temperature expansion.
I'm struggling to understand the relation between phi4 theory,non-linear sigma model and ferromagnets.
I've read this in a paper(Phys.Rev.B14(1976)3110):'It is possible to describe the long-distance behavior of the Heisenberg ferromagnets in two different ways:the phi4 theory which corresponds to an expansion around mean-field thoery and the nonlinear sigma model obtained by low-temperature expansion.'
I do understand that phi4 field theory is a coarse graining version of ferromagnets (for example,the Ising model),and achieve better results than mean field theory,but why is it 'an expansion around mean field theory'?
Also I fail to understand non-linear sigma model as a low-temperature exapansion of ferromagnets.
 

Attachments