Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ising critical exponents

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:{{la|1=Ising critical exponents}} – (View AfDView log | edits since nomination)

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A weird article that contains a bunch of undefined Greek letters and some gobbledegook --Altenmann >talk 18:28, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 21:28, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

:Wikipedia contains hundreds of thousands of highly specialized articles in exact sciences (physics, mathematics, biology). If a non-expert looks on an article they may find it's gibberish. The terminology of the article is standard, and it is supported by links to other existing articles. PhysicsAboveAll (talk) 07:28, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

::Wikipedia is not for highly-specialized experts. Highly-specialized experts usually read highly-specialized books and papers, rather than essays of high-school students in wp. Whereas an encyclopedia is for laymen who, with some perseverance, could have some edication. But here it is not the case. The article is 100% based on primary sources. The only book cited is a ref for "Critical exponent". Therefore it is impossible to verify whether it is up-do-date or even correct at any point in time. --Altenmann >talk 07:51, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

:::The referencing is not great, but the book contains enough discussion about the Ising model for verification, and Pelissetto & Vicari (2002) is a review article (Section 3.2. is about the Ising critical exponents). In addition, while the research articles are primary sources for the new results, they are secondary for older results and the history of problem. 130.234.230.66 (talk) 15:28, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

::I completely agree @PhysicsAboveAll on this, and I strongly disagree with the proposed deletion of this article. Wikipedia is used both by laymen and experts, and as long as either (in the best case both) group benefits from the existence of an article, one should not remove it. I do agree that this article is lacking in numerous aspects, I have personally used it several times in the past and found it useful. 139.18.9.3 (talk) 10:22, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. No valid reason for deletion (WP:DEL-REASON) has been given. Wikipedia strives to be accessible, but this does not mean that technical articles should be removed. Instead, they should be written one level down from the level the content is usually presented on (WP:ONEDOWN). In this case, this is a topic usually presented on an advanced course in statistical mechanics, so the text should ideally be written to be accessible to an undergraduate physics student. Notability is not a concern, as the critical exponents of the Ising model are a central topic in statistical mechanics, discussed for example in Kenneth Wilson's [https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/wilson-lecture-2.pdf 1982 Nobel lecture]. A more accessible introduction would be [https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/statphys.html David Tong's lecture notes] (Ch. 5) Leo Kadanoff's commentary in Journal Club for Condensed Matter Physics (cited in the article) is a useful secondary source here. 130.234.230.66 (talk) 12:48, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
• Merge to Ising model. I do not see that the critical exponents are an independently notable topic that need a subarticle here. Reywas92^Talk 14:08, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
• :Notability is not an issue, as there's ample discussion about the exponents in the literature. Of course, they are always discussed in the context of the model, but note that the [https://prosesize.toolforge.org/?title=Ising+model&domain=en.wikipedia.org prose size] of Ising model is 12086 words, not counting the parts formatted as lists. Probably there is a lot of fluff to be condensed, but at the moment this suggests that we should not add more stuff (see WP:SIZERULE), but instead split off subarticles. There may, however, be better ways to do the split than the current one. 130.234.230.66 (talk) 15:11, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
• ::There are zero sources in the Ising model#Four dimensions and above, which like a lot of the article is dense explanations of formulas. Much of this could be trimmed since we are an encyclopedia not a textbook. The article uses "we" 32 times... Reywas92^Talk 17:49, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
• :::I agree that it can be improved, but that should be done by someone knowledgeable, otherwise it might not improve WP. The Ising model in 4-epsilon and higher dimensions is discussed in standard textbooks, which indicates that we should also have a substantial discussion. In the Encyclopedia of Condensed Matter Physics (2024), the word "we" is used 4562 times over its 4473 pages. MOS:WE also makes an exception for "author's we" in scientific writing. 130.234.240.12 (talk) 19:19, 27 May 2025 (UTC)
• Speedy Keep. The nominator's reasons for going to AfD seem to be inappropriate. As mentioned by others above, this is a well established topic, it seems that no good WP:BEFORE was done; a quick GS search give [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&q=%22ising+critical+exponents%22&btnG= many] links. Yes, it can (and should) be improved, I suggest a more gentle lead sentence to paragraph before the current content (I tagged it for a lead rewrite). Ldm1954 (talk) 22:14, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

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::I think your question was already answered by several of us above, the topic is very notable, see the results of the GS search. Ldm1954 (talk) 07:27, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

:::Let me put my response another way. Any professional scientist in physics or materials science will have heard of Ising models and these exponents, and perhaps professionals in a few other areas, although they may not know the details (I dont). The rating in Talk:Ising critical exponents of "Mid-importance" is, IMHO, reasonable accurate. A topic which has such a large journal and book literature is notable, the specific GS search https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&q=%22ising+critical+exponents%22&btnG= has close to 700 entries. Ldm1954 (talk) 07:52, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

• Comment. There is a body of literature discussing "Ising critical exponents": [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=fi&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22Ising+critical+exponents%22&btnG= articles] + [https://www.google.com/search?udm=36&q=%22Ising+critical+exponents%22 books]. There's not much question of notability in that sense. Another term which refers to these exponents is Ising universality class (It might even be a better name for the article). One can find more sources with that term: [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=fi&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22Ising+universality+class%22&btnG= articles] + [https://www.google.com/search?udm=36&q=%22Ising+universality+class%22 books]. The fact that the ordinary liquid-gas phase transition belongs to the 3D Ising universality class makes this very relevant for ordinary matter, and that also distinguishes the topic from Ising model (Ising model being just one example system in Ising universality class). 130.234.110.113 (talk) 06:54, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
• Delete or Redirect to Ising model. The topic is not independently notable. No need to create a separate article for this. 110.227.37.228 (talk) 12:23, 3 June 2025 (UTC)
• Keep and possibly rename to Ising universality class as suggested above. The nomination is misguided; there's nothing actually wrong with having an article that requires a technical background, since for the most part nearly everyone who would be looking it up will have that technical background. The Ising model is a workhorse of statistical physics, as any textbook on the topic will confirm. On my desk right now I have Kerson Huang's Statistical Mechanics (Wiley, 1987), which has two whole chapters devoted to it (one on the Ising model in general and another on the exact solution for the 2D square lattice). The critical exponents of the Ising model in different dimensions are an important feature of it. I would agree with the suggestion to merge this material into the main Ising model page, but that article is already rather long and not so well organized. Moreover, merely merging this text into that would leave the notation undefined, so we'd be writing even more and making the page longer yet again. I think that our coverage of the topic overall would benefit from judiciously trimming Ising model and migrating some of its text to other articles. One approach would be to rename this article to Ising universality class and bring most of Ising model#Applications over into it. But deleting this article would be the wrong first step. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:01, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

:*Merge to universality class. Most of the numbers are already there, and so is an explanation of the notation. (I am revising my opinion after more fully surveying the articles in this topic area.) Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 20:00, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

• My preference would be to merge this information into a streamlined set of articles including (or reorganizing) Ising model, Universality class, Square lattice Ising model, Two-dimensional critical Ising model and Kramers–Wannier duality (which is currently all about the Ising model except for some "other contexts" mentioned in passing). This could help to provide context clarifying the notability of the critical exponents and the methods used to obtain them, rather than giving us a short listicle tabulating a handful of numbers (most of which are already also in Universality class). That said, in practice I doubt we have a group with the time and inclination to carry out this streamlining (I can't volunteer), and in the absence of that I wouldn't object to leaving things as they are. --David Schaich ^Talk/_Cont 12:06, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

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• Keep given that notability has been established above, I'm not understanding why we should do anything with this article - let's leave it as it is. Stockhausenfan (talk) 18:36, 10 June 2025 (UTC)