Recent developments of the hierarchical reference theory of fluids and its relation to the renormalization group

Abstract

The Hierarchical Reference Theory (HRT) of fluids is a general framework for the description of phase transitions in microscopic models of classical and quantum statistical physics. The foundations of HRT are briefly reviewed in a self-consistent formulation which includes both the original sharp cut-off procedure and the smooth cut-off implementation, which has been recently investigated. The critical properties of HRT are summarized, together with the behaviour of the theory at first-order phase transitions. However, the emphasis of this presentation is on the close relationship between HRT and non-perturbative renormalization group methods, as well as on recent generalizations of HRT to microscopic models of interest in soft matter and quantum many body physics.