New results in the theory of wetting transitions (invited)

The aim of this contribution is to draw attention to some recent developments in the theory of wettingtransitions which may be of interest to the magnetism community. After presenting a qualitative discussion of wetting phenomena, the predictions of both the mean field and renormalization group (RG) theories of wetting with short range forces are reviewed. Recent Monte Carlo (MC) results are also described and possible causes of some of the discrepancies between the RG and MC results are discussed. Wetting phenomena in magnetic systems with a first_order bulk transition are considered and it is shown that metallic magnets and magnetic insulators (with short_range exchange) belong to different universality classes. Both the need for and the feasibility of experimental tests of the theory are emphasized.