Related papers: Pretransitional phenomena in dilute crystals with …
Primordial magnetic fields seem to be a generic relic of phase transitions in the early universe. We consider a primordial electromagnetic field formed as a result of a second-order phase transition, and show that it is stable to thermal…
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",…
First order phase transitions occur discretely from one state to another, however they often display continuous behavior. To understand this nature, it is essential to probe how the emergent phase nucleates, interacts and evolves with the…
Materials with nanoscale phase separation are considered. A system representing a heterophase mixture of ferromagnetic and paramagnetic phases is studied. After averaging over phase configurations, a renormalized Hamiltonian is derived…
Crystallization and vapor condensation are considered as processes of sequential entering of single atoms/molecules into condensate. The latent heat can be carry away by radiation of characteristic frequencies generated in the course of…
We review the theory of second--order (ferro--)elastic phase transitions, where the order parameter consists of a certain linear combination of strain tensor components, and the accompanying soft mode is an acoustic phonon. In…
We derive a simple system of equations to describe the magnetization relaxation of a molecular spin in weak interaction with a thermal bath for the whole temperature domain. Using this for the intermediate temperature domain where the…
Bulk studies have revealed a first-order valence phase transition in Ba$_2$PrRu$_{1-x}$Ir$_x$O$_6$ ($0.10 \le x \le 0.25$), which is absent in the parent compounds with $x = 0$ (Pr$^{3+}$) and $x =1$ (Pr$^{4+}$), which exhibit…
We shall discuss magnetization and transport measurements in materials exhibiting a broad first-order transition. The phase transitions would be caused by varying magnetic field as well as by varying temperature, and we concentrate on…
Studies of nucleation generally focus on the properties of the critical cluster, but the presence of defects within the crystal lattice means that the population of nuclei necessarily evolve through a distribution of pre-critical clusters…
We discovered a first-order phase transition between dimerized-antiferromagnetic and uniform-antiferromagnetic phases in impurity-doped spin-Peierls (SP) cuprate Cu{1-x}MgxGeO3. As impurity concentration increases, linear reduction of SP…
The effect of magnetic fluctuations on the free energy, the order parameter profile and the latent heat at the equilibrium point of the first order phase transition to superconducting state in thin films of type I superconductors is…
First-order structural phase transition is a common phenomenon in materials that qualitatively alters their physical properties. Yet, the abrupt first-order nature is usually unexplained by realistic computations, implying an omission of…
We show that order-parameter fluctuations in a good type-I superconductor or a liquid crystal always increase the size of the first-order transition. This behavior is eventually changed when the system crosses over to inverted-XY critical…
The state of art in the theoretical and experimental studies of transition metal doped oxides (dilute magnetic dielectrics) is reviewed. The available data show that the generic non-equilibrium state of oxide films doped with magnetic…
This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the ground state and thermodynamic properties of a spin-pseudospin chain representing a model of a one-dimensional dilute magnet with two types of nonmagnetic charged impurities. For this…
Recent experiments on mixed liquid crystals have highlighted the hugely significant role of ferromagnetic nanoparticle impurities in defining the nematic-smectic-A phase transition point. Structured around a Flory-Huggins free energy of…
One-dimensional model of a system where first-order phase transition occurs is examined in the present paper. It is shown that basic properties of the phenomenon, such as a well defined temperature of transition, are caused both by…
The effective potential for the order parameter $\phi ^{\dagger } \phi$ is investigated in massless $\phi ^{4}$-theory in the presence of magnetic fields at finite temperature. It is found that the first order nature of the phase transition…
We calculate the first-order perturbative correction to the transition temperature $T_c$ in a superconductor with both non-magnetic and magnetic impurities. We do this by first evaluating the correction to the effective potential,…