Field theory description of continuous phase transitions

Arturo Amador

Connor Behan, Leonardo Rastelli, Slava Rychkov +1 more

Abstract We study the second-order phase transition in the d -dimensional Ising model with long-range interactions decreasing as a power of the distance 1 / r d + s . For s below some known value s ∗ , the transition is described by a conformal field theory without a local stress tensor operator, with critical exponents varying continuously as functions of s . At s = s ∗ , the phase transition crosses over to the short-range universality class. While the location s ∗ of this crossover has been known for 40 years, its physics has not been fully understood, the main difficulty being that the standard description of the long-range critical point is strongly coupled at the crossover. In this paper we propose another field-theoretic description which, on the contrary, is weakly coupled near the crossover. We use this description to clarify the nature of the crossover and make predictions about the critical exponents. That the same long-range critical point can be reached from two different UV descriptions provides a new example of infrared duality.

Tong Chern

We give a new simple derivation for the sine-Gordon description of Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless(BKT) phase transition (is driven by vortices). Our derivation is simpler than traditional derivations. Besides, our derivation is a continuous field theoretic derivation by using path integration, different from the traditional derivations which are based on lattice theory or based on Coulomb gas model. Our new derivation rely on Abelian duality of two dimensional quantum field theory. By utilizing this duality in path integration, we find that the vortex configurations are naturally mapped to exponential operators in dual description, these operators are the vortex operators that can create vortices, the sine-Gordon description then naturally follows. Our method may be useful for the investigation to the BKT physics of superconductors.

D J Amit, Marshall Luban

Antoni Planes, Avadh Saxena

The chapter is an introduction to basic equilibrium aspects of phase transitions. It starts by reviewing thermodynamics and the thermodynamic description of phase transitions. Next, lattice models, such as the paradigmatic Ising model, are introduced as simple physical models that permit a mechano-statistical study of phase transitions from a more microscopic point of view. It is shown that the Ising model can quite faithfully describe many different systems after suitable interpretation of the lattice variables. Special emphasis is placed on the mean-field concept and the mean-field approximations. The deformable Ising model is then studied as an example that illustrates the interplay of different degrees of freedom. Subsequently, the Landau theory of phase transitions is introduced for continuous and first-order transitions, as well as critical and tricritical behaviour are analysed. Finally, scaling theories and the notion of universality within the framework of the renormalization group are briefly discussed.

Sang Pyo Kim