Combinatorics and physics Combinatorics and physics Combinatorial physics or physical combinatorics is the area of interaction between physics and combinatorics. "Combinatorial Physics is an emerging area which unites combinatorial and discrete mathematical techniques applied to theoretical physics, especially Quantum Theory.". "Physical combinatorics might be defined naively as combinatorics guided by ideas or insights from physics". Combinatorics has always played an important role in quantum field theory and statistical physics. However, combinatorial physics only emerged as a specific field after a seminal work by Alain Connes and Dirk Kreimer, showing that the renormalization of Feynman diagrams can be described by a Hopf algebra. Combinatorial
Action (physics) (see also below). The action is defined by an integral, and the classical equations of motion of a system can be derived by minimizing the value of that integral. This simple principle provides deep insights into physics, and is an important concept in modern theoretical physics. "Action" was defined in several now obsolete ways during the development of the concept. Expressed in mathematical language, using the calculus of variations, the evolution of a physical system (i.e., how the system actually progresses from one state to another) corresponds to a stationary point (usually, a minimum) of the action. Several different definitions