Reaction-diffusion processes, critical dynamics, and quantum chains (Q1317843)

The master equation describing non-equilibrium one-dimensional problems like diffusion limited reactions or critical dynamics of classical spin systems can be written as a Schrödinger equation in which the wave function is the probability distribution and the Hamiltonian is that of a quantum chain with nearest neighbor interactions. Since many one- dimensional quantum chains are integrable, this opens a new field of applications. At the same time physical intuition and probabilistic methods bring new insight into the understanding of the properties of quantum chains. A simple example is the asymmetric diffusion of several species of particles which leads naturally to Hecke algebras and \(q\)- deformed quantum groups. Many other examples are given. Several relevant technical aspects like critical exponents, correlation functions, and finite-size scaling are also discussed in detail.