Bernhard G. Nickel

Research Topics

Critical phenomena in simple models; polymer solution theory.

Research Activities

Field theory techniques are used in the study of critical phenomena and dilute and semi-dilute polymer solutions. The series expansion and analysis methods that have previously been used for accurate estimates of critical exponents and single chain polymer expansion factors are now generalized to obtain the complete equation of state near the critical point and the interpenetration factors of interacting polymer chains in solution. Validation of the field theory techniques to model polymer solutions is obtained by renormalization group techniques supplemented by high precision Monte Carlo sampling of self-avoiding walks on lattices and continuum stick-bead models.