Related papers: On the Phase Transitions That Cannot Materialize

We present experimental evidence for a first-order freezing/melting phase transition in a nonequilibrium system -- an oscillated two-dimensional isobaric granular fluid. The steady-state transition occurs between a gas and a crystal and is…

Transition metal dichalcogenides exhibit a wide range of semiconducting, metallic, correlated, and topological electronic states that arise from strong coupling between lattice structure, dimensionality, and electronic degrees of freedom.…

The most important recent results in the theory of phase transitions and quantum effects in quantum anharmonic crystals are presented and discussed. In particular, necessary and sufficient conditions for a phase transition to occur at some…

There is only limited experimental evidence for the existence in nature of phase transitions of Ehrenfest order greater than two. However, there is no physical reason for their non-existence, and such transitions certainly exist in a number…

The crossing of a transition state in a multidimensional reactive system is mediated by invariant geometric objects in phase space: An invariant hyper-sphere that represents the transition state itself and invariant hyper-cylinders that…

A potential phase transition between a normal ground state and a photon-condensed ground state in many-dipole light-matter systems is a topic of considerable controversy, exasperated by conflicting no-go and counter no-go theorems and often…

This paper looks at the early theory of phase transitions. It considers a group of related concepts derived from condensed matter and statistical physics. The key technical ideas here go under the names of "singularity", "order parameter",…

During the phase transitions, diverse states evolve with multiplex phenomena arising from the critical competition. In this study, a displacive martensitic transformation with a lattice shear distortion was unexpectedly observed at the…

We have performed large-scale Monte Carlo simulations on a model describing a (2+1)-dimensional array of dissipative Josephson junctions. We find three distinct stable quantum phases of the system. The most ordered state features long-range…

Bose condensed light can form new phases [1] in a dye filled cavity due to the presence of the orientational disorder created by dye molecules which are essentially frozen on the time scale of the photonic thermalization (few ps). At longer…

We consider atoms in two different periodic potentials induced by different lasers, one of which is coupled to a mechanical membrane via radiation pressure force. The atoms are intrinsically two-level systems that can absorb or emit…

The formation and dynamics of a wide variety of binary two-dimensional ordered structures and superlattices are investigated through a phase field crystal model with sublattice ordering. Various types of binary ordered phases, the phase…

Colloidal particles are often seen as big atoms that can be directly observed in real space. They are therefore playing an increasingly important role as model systems to study processes of interest in condensed matter physics such as…

Adiabatic techniques using multi-level systems have recently been generalised from the optical case to settings in atom optics, solid state and even classical electrodynamics. The most well known example of these is the so called STIRAP…

We find an order-disorder transition from crystals to disordered crystals for static packings of frictionless spheres. While the geometric indicators are mostly blind to the transition, disordered crystals already exhibit properties apart…

Transitions from classical to quantum behaviour in a spin system with two degenerate ground states separated by twin energy barriers which are asymmetric due to an applied magnetic field are investigated. It is shown that these transitions…

Metallic glass is a frozen liquid with structural disorder that retains degenerate free energy without spontaneous symmetry breaking to become a solid. For over half a century, this puzzling structure has raised fundamental questions about…

Discontinuous quantum phase transitions and the associated metastability play central roles in diverse areas of physics ranging from ferromagnetism to false vacuum decay in the early universe. Using strongly-interacting ultracold atoms in…

Evidence is summarized attesting that the standard exchange field theory of ferromagnetism by Heisenberg has not been successful. It is replaced by the crystal field and a simple assumption that spin orientation is inexorably associated…

In this work, we report observations of phase transitions in 2D multistable mechanical metamaterials that are initiated by collisions of soliton-like pulses in the metamaterial. Analogous to first-order phase transitions in crystalline…