Stationary points approach to thermodynamic phase transitions

Details Stationary points approach to thermodynamic phase transitions Stationary points approach to thermodynamic phase transitions

2010-10-21

arxiv.org/abs/1010.4437v1

Physics

Condensed Matter

Statistical Mechanics

5 pages, 2 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of the 11th Granada Seminar on Computational Physics

Scientific paper

Nonanalyticities of thermodynamic functions are studied by adopting an approach based on stationary points of the potential energy. For finite systems, each stationary point is found to cause a nonanalyticity in the microcanonical entropy, and the functional form of this nonanalytic term is derived explicitly. With increasing system size, the order of the nonanalytic term grows, leading to an increasing differentiability of the entropy. It is found that only "asymptotically flat" stationary points may cause a nonanalyticity that survives in the thermodynamic limit, and this property is used to derive an analytic criterion establishing the existence or absence of phase transitions. We sketch how this result can be employed to analytically compute transition energies of classical spin models.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Stationary points approach to thermodynamic phase transitions does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Stationary points approach to thermodynamic phase transitions, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Stationary points approach to thermodynamic phase transitions will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-423405