A rescaling argument is applied to systems with a highly degenerate ground state. It is suggested that these systems can exhibit a distinctive low-temperature phase in which correlations decay algebraically with distance. This behaviour seens to be permitted when the spatial dimensionality is sufficiently high, d>or=d c . In addition, we find at d c an infinite-order phase transition ( nu = infinity , alpha =- infinity ) occurring at non-zero temperature, and only paramagnetic behaviour at d<d c . Since our results arise from a one-parameter renormalisation-group viewpoint, they should be seen as suggestive rather than definitive.
A rescaling argument is applied to systems with a highly degenerate ground state. It is suggested that these systems can exhibit a distinctive low-temperature phase in which correlations decay algebraically with distance. This behaviour seens to be permitted when the spatial dimensionality is sufficiently high, d>or=d c . In addition, we find at d c an infinite-order phase transition ( nu = infinity , alpha =- infinity ) occurring at non-zero temperature, and only paramagnetic behaviour at d<d c . Since our results arise from a one-parameter renormalisation-group viewpoint, they should be seen as suggestive rather than definitive.
The phase diagram of the q=3 state Potts antiferromagnet in a field is studied by exact mappings and Monte Carlo methods, and it is shown that systems with macroscopic ground-state degeneracy may exhibit conventional-type critical ordering. Our Monte Carlo data for the square-lattice case indicate a finite-temperature ordering in a range of field values where the entropy of the ground state is extensive. In a particular limit this phase transition can be shown to be of the Ising type by mapping the Potts model onto a colored, nearest-neighbor exclusion lattice gas. We also discuss the phase diagram of the body-centered-cubic Ising antiferromagnet in a field in order to show that renormalization-group arguments alone are not sufficient to restrict the diversity of possible low-temperature phases occurring in systems with a macroscopically degenerate ground state.
The ground-state properties of the triangular antiferromagnetic Ising model with Ising constant J in a transverse field h are investigated by a real-space renormalisation group method. For h=0, the known properties (energy=-J, finite entropy, no order) are recovered. For h not=0, the ground state remains highly degenerate, no order exists and the correlation function exhibits power-law behaviour up to (h/J)c approximately=1.41, where a phase transition takes place to a non-degenerate ground state. At h/J=(h/J)c, power-law behaviour is still observed for the correlation function but with a different exponent. Just above this region a gap Delta opens ( Delta approximately ((h/J)-(h/J)c)s with s=0.8) and the coherence length of the correlation function xi diverges as xi varies as ((h/J)-(h/J)c)-v with v=0.8. This corresponds to a three-dimensional classical model where h is replaced by the temperature. In this type of system, where the ground state has a degeneracy proportional to N2/3 it is predicted that a transition will occur at a finite T c to a low-temperature phase without order but with power-law behaviour for the correlation function, as for the classical XY model in two dimensions.
Abstract While temperature is well understood as an intensive quantity in standard thermodynamics, it is less clear whether the same holds in quantum systems displaying correlations with no classical analogue. The problem lies in the fact that, under the presence of non-classical correlations, subsystems of a system in thermal equilibrium are, in general, not described by a thermal state at the same temperature as the global system and thus one cannot simply assign a local temperature to them. However, there have been identified situations in which correlations in thermal states decay sufficiently fast so that the state of their subsystems can be very well approximated by the reduced states of equilibrium systems that are only slightly bigger than the subsystems themselves, hence allowing for a valid local definition of temperature. In this work, we address the question of whether temperature is locally well defined for a bosonic system with local interactions that undergoes a phase transition at non-zero temperature. We consider a three-dimensional bosonic model in the grand canonical state and verify that a certain form of locality of temperature holds regardless of the temperature, and despite the presence of infinite-range correlations at and below the critical temperature of the phase transition.
We discuss the phase transition in an Ising model with correlated disorder. Two parameters describe the disorder: its variance and its finite correlation lengthscale. We show that in this model, depending on the disorder parameters, one of two qualitatively different scenarios for the transition applies. The first is a transition driven by thermal fluctuations around a spatially homogeneous ground state. This is also found in systems with uncorrelated disorder. The second scenario is a percolative one: locally ordered regions grow in the paramagnetic phase and form an infinite cluster at the critical temperature. In contrast to the first scenario, thermal fluctuations now occur around an inhomogeneous ground state. The dominating lengthscale is not the correlation length of thermal fluctuations but the connectivity length of ordered regions. Based on a discussion of the role of thermal fluctuations in the percolative scenario we identify the parameter ranges in which the different scenarios apply.
Pairing and topological phases in cold atoms with long range interactions Chapter 1 Introduction The systematic study and classification of phase transitions has become a popular research area in physics over the past decades. The most familiar phenomena associated to the concept of phase transition are the ones giving rise to macroscopic changes in the properties of strongly correlated many-body systems due to thermal fluctuations. The most prominent examples of this kind of behaviour are the ferromagnetic-paramagnetic transition in lattice spin models and the liquid-gas transition. On the other hand, when dealing with quantum-mechanical systems changes of matter from one state to another can arise as the result of the variation of parameters other than temperature. In particular, when a given many-body quantum problem is studied at zero temperature, thereby suppressing thermal fluctuations, it is the interplay between kinetic energy and interactions that can cause the system to jump into different phases as the model parameters are varied. Phase transitions occurring at zero temperature are widely known as quantum phase transitions. In the framework of the physics of phase transitions, the role of dimensionality is a noticeable one. The major challenge in this perspective is the treatment of low dimensional systems, where standard mean-field treatments and ordinary perturbation theory are known to fail due to the enhancement of fluctuations. The goal of describing collective behaviours in reduced dimensionality is usually pursued in one-dimensional (1D) systems, which turn out to be simple enough to be studied in an effective way through both numerical and analytical techniques, while exhibiting a rich and deeply fascinating phenomenology. As a matter of fact, since particles confined to one dimension cannot avoid interactions with each other, the typical low energy excitations of the system are represented by collective density waves, which substitute nearly free quasiparticle excitations characterizing the behaviour of three-dimensional Fermi liquids in the description of the effects of the interplay between kinetic fluctuations and interactions. On the other hand, the tools employed in the activity of tackling 1D manybody problems are efficient and well developed. The analytical techniques aremainly based on the bosonization technique, which allows for the reformulation of strongly correlated 1D systems onto free bosonic theories, which can then be analyzed by means of standard path integral techniques. Meanwhile, the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm represents the state-of-theart numerical machinery in the study of 1D physics, since it allows to efficiently extract the low energy properties of the model Hamiltonian and consequently characterize the corresponding phase diagram by means of the behaviour of properly chosen order parameters. As a final remark pointing out the relevance of the research effort in the direction of a better understanding of 1D many-body quantum systems, it is worth noticing that 1D systems do not represent only a playground for theorists, but have been experimentally realized by means of setups with cold atoms trapped in optical lattices, where the experimentalist is able to tune the model parameters by varying the characteristic features of the trapping laser beams and meanwhile has a comfortable access to the most relevant observables.
The dependence of the effective coupling J'(L,m) on length scale L and spin dimension m is studied numerically for vector spin glasses using the 'defect energy' method for space dimension d=2,3 (m=2,3) and 1<or=d<or=4 (m= infinity ). Scaling towards weak coupling, J'(L,m) approximately L -1 nu /, L>>L c (m), is found in all cases studied implying a power-law divergence of the correlation length, xi approximately T - nu , for T to 0 but no finite-temperature transition. The characteristic length L c (m), which increases with m, separates a preasymptotic (small L) regime where m= infinity behaviour is observed, J'(L,m) approximately=J'(L, infinity ), from the asymptotic (large-L) regime which gives the true critical behaviour for finite m. Values of nu (m,d) obtained are nu ( infinity ,2) approximately=0.65, nu ( infinity ,3) approximately=1.0, nu ( infinity ,4) approximately=1.5 nu (2,2) approximately=1,1, nu (2.3) approximately=2.2. The m=2 exponents are in good agreement with a Migdal-Kadanoff-like renormalisation group calculation. For d=1 the unexpected results nu approximately=O for m= infinity is obtained if frustration is included. For d=3, anisotropy is expected to induce an Ising-like phase transition at a finite temperature, and a crossover expression for the transition temperature is derived.