Relevant operator

An operator is relevant at a fixed point when its coupling has positive renormalization-group eigenvalue. Its dimensionless coupling grows under coarse-graining and drives the theory away from the fixed point unless tuned.

A perturbation of a renormalization-group fixed point is relevant if it grows as the coarse-graining length increases. For a continuous flow $d\delta g/d\ell =M\delta g$, an eigenvector of the linearized matrix with eigenvalue $\sigma$ grows as $e^{\sigma \ell }$; a positive real part is relevant, a negative real part is irrelevant and a zero real part requires nonlinear analysis. For a discrete transformation with length factor $b>1$, its Jacobian matrix multiplier $\lambda$ instead gives $\delta g_n={\lambda }^n\delta g_0$: $|\lambda |>1$ is relevant, $|\lambda |<1$ is irrelevant and $|\lambda |=1$ requires nonlinear analysis. For a positive multiplier the scaling exponent is $y=\log \lambda /\log b$. Thus a positive discrete eigenvalue smaller than one is an irrelevant operator direction, while the sign criterion belongs to the continuous generator.

A discrete renormalization group with length factor $b>1$ and positive relevant thermal multiplier ${\lambda }_t>1$ sends $t$ to ${\lambda }_{t}t$ and the correlation length to $\xi /b$. Combining this with $\xi \sim |t{|}^{-\nu }$ gives the displayed correlation-length critical exponent. The corresponding scaling dimension is $y_t=\log {\lambda }_t/\log b=1/\nu$. Relevance of discrete multipliers is determined by magnitude relative to one, unlike the sign criterion for continuous-flow eigenvalues.