Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: In the area of topological and geometric treatment of phase transitions and symmetry breaking in Hamiltonian systems, some general sufficient conditions for these phenomena in -symmetric systems (i.e. invariant under reflection of coordinates) were found in a recent paper. In this paper we present a simple topological model satisfying the above conditions, hoping to shed light on the mechanism which causes this phenomenon in more general physical models. The symmetry breaking is proved by a continuous magnetization with a nonanalytic point in correspondence with a critical temperature which divides the broken symmetry phase from the unbroken one. A particularity with respect to the common pictures of a phase transition is that the nonanalyticity of the magnetization is not accompanied by a nonanalytic behavior of the free energy.
Author: F Baroni
Institution: University of Florence
Language: English
Subfield: Condensed Matter Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1999112578