Lecture

Complex Systems: Critical Phenomena

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In course

PHYS-435: Statistical physics III

This course introduces statistical field theory, and uses concepts related to phase transitions to discuss a variety of complex systems (random walks and polymers, disordered systems, combinatorial optimisation, information theory and error correcting cod ...

Description

This lecture covers the concept of critical phenomena in complex systems, focusing on stochastic objects and percolation. It explores the emergence of tree-like structures and scale-free networks, discussing the behavior of complex systems. The instructor delves into disorder systems, glasses, and combinatorial optimization, illustrating examples and algorithms. The lecture concludes with a detailed explanation of the complexity theory, including the NP-complete problems and the concept of hardness. It also touches upon the Euler circuits and the reduction of problems to polynomial time complexity.

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Theoretical computer science

Theory of computation: Computational complexity theory

Related concepts (32)

NP (complexity)

In computational complexity theory, NP (nondeterministic polynomial time) is a complexity class used to classify decision problems. NP is the set of decision problems for which the problem instances, where the answer is "yes", have proofs verifiable in polynomial time by a deterministic Turing machine, or alternatively the set of problems that can be solved in polynomial time by a nondeterministic Turing machine. NP is the set of decision problems solvable in polynomial time by a nondeterministic Turing machine.

Time complexity

In computer science, the time complexity is the computational complexity that describes the amount of computer time it takes to run an algorithm. Time complexity is commonly estimated by counting the number of elementary operations performed by the algorithm, supposing that each elementary operation takes a fixed amount of time to perform. Thus, the amount of time taken and the number of elementary operations performed by the algorithm are taken to be related by a constant factor.

P (complexity)

In computational complexity theory, P, also known as PTIME or DTIME(nO(1)), is a fundamental complexity class. It contains all decision problems that can be solved by a deterministic Turing machine using a polynomial amount of computation time, or polynomial time. Cobham's thesis holds that P is the class of computational problems that are "efficiently solvable" or "tractable". This is inexact: in practice, some problems not known to be in P have practical solutions, and some that are in P do not, but this is a useful rule of thumb.

Finite set

In mathematics, particularly set theory, a finite set is a set that has a finite number of elements. Informally, a finite set is a set which one could in principle count and finish counting. For example, is a finite set with five elements. The number of elements of a finite set is a natural number (possibly zero) and is called the cardinality (or the cardinal number) of the set. A set that is not a finite set is called an infinite set.

Computational complexity theory

In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved by a computer. A computation problem is solvable by mechanical application of mathematical steps, such as an algorithm. A problem is regarded as inherently difficult if its solution requires significant resources, whatever the algorithm used.

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