On topics in equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical physics

This thesis divides very naturally into three chapters, reflecting the three separate areas I have worked in throughout my PhD studies. During my PhD, I published two papers, one relating to the work in the first chapter, and one to that of the second. At the time of submission, the project which the third chapter relates to was still ongoing, with plans for a future publication. The first chapter discusses work done on the real space renormalisation group (RG) for Ising and Potts models in 2 dimensions. Taking inspiration from Hasenbusch's work, a new framework for carrying out the RG is developed, its computational implementation discussed in some detail, as well as the results for a variety of systems and the implications of these results. The numerical scaling of the procedure and the consequences of this for future work are also covered. The results documented in chapter two are purely theoretical and presented in closed form. The research conducted is to do with properties of free interfaces. The second chapter is by and large critical of previous assumptions which have been made about the so-called wave vector dependent, in order to attempt to experimentally measure it and use these measurements to make further predictions. Using some simple toy models, many of these assumptions are shown to be false. In a sense, the goal of the research presented in the chapter two, is not to motivate further research, but to dissuade research in a direction we consider to be misguided, due to the faulty assumptions it is based on. The third chapter covers a small subset of a project concerned with studying correlations within the so-called Abelian Manna Model. The majority of the project involves (computational) Monte Carlo simulations of the dynamics of such systems, but as these results are not ready to present at the time of writing, the chapter is mainly concerned with some analytical results which were derived in order to validate our models for small systems, explain certain quirky phenomena arising from our simulations, and help quantify errors. Finally, there is an appendix which expands upon various topics from the first two chapters.Open Acces