Stationary points approach to thermodynamic phase transitions

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dc.contributor.authorKastner M.
dc.date.accessioned2011-05-25T08:49:56Z
dc.date.available2011-05-25T08:49:56Z
dc.date.issued2011
dc.description.abstractNonanalyticities 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. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.
dc.description.versionConference Paper
dc.identifier.citationAIP Conference Proceedings
dc.identifier.citation1332
dc.identifier.citation179
dc.identifier.citation183
dc.identifier.issn0094243X
dc.identifier.other10.1063/1.3577623
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/14750
dc.titleStationary points approach to thermodynamic phase transitions
dc.typeConference Paper
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