Related papers: Love might be a second-order phase transition
Polymorphism is ubiquitous in crystalline solids. Amorphous solids, such as glassy water and silicon, may undergo amorphous-to-amorphous transitions (AATs). The nature of AATs remains ambiguous, due to diverse system-dependent behaviors and…
First-order phase transitions are commonly associated with a discontinuous behavior of some of the thermodynamic variables and the presence of a latent heat. In the present study it is shown that this is not necessarily the case. Using…
Homogeneous nucleation of a new phase near a second, continuous, transition, is considered. The continuous transition is in the metastable region associated with the first-order phase transition, one of whose coexisting phases is…
Recent advances in nanostructure fabrication and optical control, suggest that it will soon be possible to prepare collections of interacting two-level systems (i.e. qubits) within an optical cavity. Here we show theoretically that such…
Assuming a second-order phase transition for the hadronization process, we attempt to associate intermittency patterns in high-energy hadronic collisions to fractal structures in configuration space and corresponding intermittency indices…
From the days when superconductivity was discovered its science was entangled by the unresolved problem of the relationship between superconductive state, its crystal structure and its phase transitions. The problem was exacerbated by the…
A simplified Ginzburg-Landau theory is presented to study generally a coupling of a first-order phase transition (FOPT) to a second-order phase transition (SOPT). We show analytically that, due to the coupling between the two phase…
In this conference proceeding, I discuss in detail the deconfinement to quark matter that takes place at large densities and/or temperatures. The first-order phase transition that is assumed to appear beyond a critical point gives rise to…
Disorder-broadened 1st order transitions may not carry the experimental signature of a latent heat. We discuss what experimental observation can provide a necessary and sufficient condition for characterizing this phase transition as 1st…
The transition between the two phases of 4D Euclidean Dynamical Triangulation [1] was long believed to be of second order until in 1996 first order behavior was found for sufficiently large systems [3,4]. However, one may wonder if this…
We consider cold polar molecules confined in a helical optical lattice similar to those used in holographic microfabrication. An external electric field polarizes molecules along the axis of the helix. The large-distance inter-molecular…
Quantum phase transitions have been the subject of intense investigations in the last two decades [1]. Among other problems, these phase transitions are relevant in the study of heavy fermion systems, high temperature superconductors and…
A phase transition can drive the spontaneous emergence of chiral orders in crystals below a critical temperature. However, selecting either a right- or a left-handed phase with the aid of electromagnetic fields is challenging, particularly…
We look at the influence of external fields on systems described by generic free energy functional of the order parameter. The external force may have arbitrary spatial dependence, and the order parameter coupling may be nonlinear. The…
Chiral pair fluctuation are considered near the phase boundary of the inhomogeneous chiral phase (iCP). The fluctuations are then bosonized and an effective action for the chiral pair fluctuation is basically constructed by considering the…
Quantum criticality is the intriguing possibility offered by the laws of quantum mechanics when the wave function of a many-particle physical system is forced to evolve continuously between two distinct, competing ground states. This…
Affective computing is an emerging interdisciplinary field where computational systems are developed to analyze, recognize, and influence the affective states of a human. It can generally be divided into two subproblems: affective…
Many of life's most fascinating phenomena emerge from interactions among many elements--many amino acids determine the structure of a single protein, many genes determine the fate of a cell, many neurons are involved in shaping our thoughts…
A free-energy minimization approach is used to address the secular & dynamical instabilities & the bifurcations along sequences of rotating, self-gravitating fluid and stellar systems. Our approach stems from the Landau-Ginzburg theory of…
Heterogeneous adoption thresholds exist widely in social contagions, but were always neglected in previous studies. We first propose a non-Markovian spreading threshold model with general adoption threshold distribution. In order to…