Ibraheem Sajid (University of Leeds) – Finding Complex Zeroes of Potts Models

Abstract: Potts models are relatively easily described models defined on a lattice, which are of interest as they exhibit a physical phenomenon known as a phase transition. For example, on a square lattice we might consider "configurations" where we assign each point a value from {0,1}. Each configuration has an associated "Hamiltonian" and from these we may construct the "partition function", which may be analysed to derive results of physical relevance - one such analysis is looking at the complex zeros of a polynomial derived from the partition function, producing rather striking plots.