EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Chaotic Field Theory: a Sketch
Speaker: Professor Predrag Cvitanovic
Speaker Info: Northwestern University
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

In the path integral formulation of a field theory the dominant contributions come from saddle-points, the classical solutions of equations of motion. So, if one is to develop a quantum field theory of systems that are classically chaotic or ``turbulent'', one needs to determine and classify the relevant solutions of classical nonlinear field theories. One approach is to search for spatiotemporally recurrent patterns. As we watch a turbulent system evolve, every so often we catch a glimpse of a familiar pattern: For any finite spatial resolution, the system follows approximately for a finite time a pattern belonging to a finite alphabet of admissible patterns, and the long term dynamics can be thought of as a walk through the space of such patterns, just as chaotic dynamics with a low dimensional attractor can be thought of as a succession of nearly periodic (but unstable) motions. The periodic orbit provides the machinery that converts this intuitive picture into a calculation.