Phase transitions and critical phenomena: universality and non-universal features

Abstract

This special issue of the CMP is devoted to phase transitions and critical phenomena. Several recent decades of intensive, sometimes even frantic, and fruitful activities might produce an impression that all principal work in this field has already been completed and nothing really new can be found. Of course, this is far from being true, and the aim of the present issue is to give an evidence that the field is still fertile and thankful to those who work hard on it. We hope that the readers will find this evidence in the presented papers for which we cordially thank their authors who share this aim of ours and our devotion to the subject.

A specially pleasant mission of this issue is to pay tribute to our distinguished colleague and friend Mykhailo Kozlovskii, member of the CMP Editorial Board, who has been working in the theory of phase transitions for nearly 40 years. In August 2012, Mykhailo crossed a magic line of time, called a sixty years jubilee, and thus reached the age of maturity and wisdom. With this regard, we wish him good health and many years of fruitful and joyful life among his favorite collective variables, fishing, invariably beloved family, and faithful friends. We also wish him to open new horizons and to explore further bystreets in statistical physics, to meet new friends, colleagues and followers.