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Concept
Mean-field theory
Summary
In physics and probability theory, Mean-field theory (MFT) or Self-consistent field theory studies the behavior of high-dimensional random (stochastic) models by studying a simpler model that approximates the original by averaging over degrees of freedom (the number of values in the final calculation of a statistic that are free to vary). Such models consider many individual components that interact with each other.
The main idea of MFT is to replace all interactions to any one body with an average or effective interaction, sometimes called a molecular field. This reduces any many-body problem into an effective one-body problem. The ease of solving MFT problems means that some insight into the behavior of the system can be obtained at a lower computational cost.
MFT has since been applied to a wide range of fields outside of physics, including statistical inference, graphical models, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, epidemic models, queueing theory, computer-network performance and game theory, as in the quantal response equilibrium.
The idea first appeared in physics (statistical mechanics) in the work of Pierre Curie and Pierre Weiss to describe phase transitions. MFT has been used in the Bragg–Williams approximation, models on Bethe lattice, Landau theory, Pierre–Weiss approximation, Flory–Huggins solution theory, and Scheutjens–Fleer theory.
Systems with many (sometimes infinite) degrees of freedom are generally hard to solve exactly or compute in closed, analytic form, except for some simple cases (e.g. certain Gaussian random-field theories, the 1D Ising model). Often combinatorial problems arise that make things like computing the partition function of a system difficult. MFT is an approximation method that often makes the original solvable and open to calculation, and in some cases MFT may give very accurate approximations.
In field theory, the Hamiltonian may be expanded in terms of the magnitude of fluctuations around the mean of the field. In this context, MFT can be viewed as the "zeroth-order" expansion of the Hamiltonian in fluctuations.
Official source
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