Abstract
It sounds at first bizarre, but one of the most active subjects of recent research at the interface between field theory and statistical mechanics concerns a real material that seems more properly to belong to the arcana of organic chemistry than to either field theory or statistical mechanics. The material is polyacetylene ((CH)X), a quasi-one dimensional organic polymer with some very interesting and potentially exotic properties.1 In this necessarily brief discussion, I will try to give a pedagpgical introduction to some of the recent theoretical studies2–9 of polyacetylene and to convey some of the reasons for the intense excitement in this area. To provide this overview, I will have to survey the work of many individuals, and thus most of what I will present is not my own research. The small part that I have contributed has been done in a close and fruitful collaboration with Alan Bishop and Klaus Fesser.9,10
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© 1983 Plenum Press, New York
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Campbell, D.K. (1983). Polyacetylene: A Real Material Linking Condensed Matter and Field Theory. In: Honerkamp, J., Pohlmeyer, K., Römer, H. (eds) Structural Elements in Particle Physics and Statistical Mechanics. NATO Advanced Study Institutes Series, vol 82. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3509-2_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3509-2_13
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