On the origin of phase transitions in the absence of symmetry-breaking

Giulio Pettini, Matteo Gori, Roberto Franzosi, Cecilia Clementi and Marco Pettini

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2019, vol. 516, issue C, 376-392

Abstract: In this paper we investigate the Hamiltonian dynamics of a lattice gauge model in three spatial dimensions. Our model Hamiltonian is defined on the basis of a continuum version of a duality transformation of a three dimensional Ising model. The system so obtained undergoes a thermodynamic phase transition in the absence of a global symmetry-breaking and thus in the absence of an order parameter. It is found that the first order phase transition undergone by this model fits into a microcanonical version of an Ehrenfest-like classification of phase transitions applied to the configurational entropy. It is discussed why the seemingly divergent behaviour of the third derivative of configurational entropy is the effect of a deeper geometrical transition of the equipotential submanifolds of configuration space, which, in its turn, is likely to be the ”shadow” of an even deeper transition of topological kind.

Keywords: Microcanonical phase transitions; Topology and phase transitions; Hamiltonian dynamics and phase transitions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:516:y:2019:i:c:p:376-392

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2018.10.001

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