Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2004 / iii / Paper 46 / 2 / a

Partition the lattice into blocks of side $b$ sites, with $b>1$, and retain one coarse spin ${\sigma }_R^{\prime }$ per block. A blocking kernel is a nonnegative conditional weight $K_b({\sigma }^{\prime },\sigma )$ normalized by ${\sum }_{{\sigma }^{\prime }}{K}_b({\sigma }^{\prime },\sigma )=1$ for every microscopic configuration. A deterministic majority rule, with fair resolution of ties, is one example.

Define the blocked statistical Hamiltonian and its field-independent constant bySumming over ${\sigma }^{\prime }$ proves exact equality of the old and new partition functions. The lattice spacing becomes $ba$; expressing lengths again in the original units completes the real-space renormalization group step. Blocking generally generates many-body and longer-range interactions, so exactness requires retaining the full operator space and the additive constant. A finite-coupling truncation is a calculational approximation.