Recent advances in phase transitions and critical phenomena

Phase transitions and critical phenomena are of ubiquitous importance from the femtometre scale in quantum chromodynamics to galaxy formation in the universe, from the folding, adsorption or denaturation of bio-polymers to the magnetisation effects in storage media, from percolation in complex social networks to fragmentation transitions in atomic nuclei. The present issue discusses a cross section of the current research on phase transitions and critical phenomena in condensed-matter physics, with a focus on soft and hard matter systems as well as the most important methods used for studying such problems.