arXiv:cond-mat/0605432 · Europhysics Letters (EPL)
Origin of the approximate universality of distributions in equilibrium correlated systems
Maxime Clusel, Jean-Yves Fortin, P. C. W. Holdsworth
Abstract
We propose an interpretation of previous experiments and numerical experiments showing that, for a large class of systems, distributions of global quantities are similar to a distribution originally obtained for the magnetization in the 2D-XY model (Bramwell S. T. et al. , Nature , 396 (1998) 512). This approach, developed for the Ising model, is based on previous numerical observations (Clusel M. et al. , Phys. Rev. E , 70 (2004) 046112). We obtain an effective action using a perturbative method, which successfully describes the order parameter fluctuations near the phase transition. This leads to a direct link between the D-dimensional Ising model and the XY model in the same dimension, which appears to be a generic feature of many equilibrium critical systems and which is at the heart of the above observations.