Dimensional Crossover and Effective Exponents

Abstract

We investigate the critical behavior of the lambda phi^4 theory defined on S^1 x R^d having two finite length scales beta, the circumference of S^1, and k^{-1}, the blocking scale introduced by the renormalization group transformation. By numerically solving the coupled differential RG equations for the finite-temperature blocked potential U_{beta,k}(Phi) and the wavefunction renormalization constant Z_{beta,k}(Phi), we demonstrate how the finite-size scaling variable betabar = beta k determines whether the phase transition is (d+1)- or d-dimensional in the limits betabar >> 1 and betabar << 1, respectively. For the intermediate values of betabar, finite-size effects play an important role. We also discuss the failure of the polynomial expansion of the effective potential near criticality.