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The development of SLE has given a new insight in the scaling limit of several statistical lattice models in two dimensions. Many properties of the scaling limit were known before albeit not rigorously. This is based on techniques such as conformal field theory, exactly solvable models and what is known as the coulomb gas approach.

In this lecture I will explain how this last approach, has led to simple formulae for the critical exponents of various two-dimensional models, among which Potts models.

The first step is a mapping of the Potts model to a model of a discrete unbounded variable. By renormalization arguments this is related to a model with continuous variables. In this, effectively free field model, critical exponents can be calculated directly.