Dielectric and ultrasonic investigation of phase transition in cuinp2s6 crystals

Investigation results of dielectric and ultrasonic properties of layered CuInP₂S₆ crystals are presented. At low frequencies, dielectric spectra are highly influenced by the high ionic conductivity with the activation energy of 7357.4?K (0.635?eV). The high-frequency part of the spectra is determined by relaxational soft mode. The critical slowing down and Debye-type dispersion show the order–disorder type of the phase transition. The temperature dependence of the relaxational soft mode and dielectric contribution show a quasi-one-dimensional behaviour. Ultrasonic velocity exhibits critical slowing down which is accompanied by attenuation peaks in the phase transition region. Layered CuInP₂S₆ crystals have extremely large elastic nonlinearity in the direction perpendicular to layers. The nonlinear elastic parameters substantially increases at the PT temperature.     

CP Violation in the Linear Sigma Model

Motivated by the possibility of the formation of CP-odd domains in heavy ion collisions, we investigate the effects of CP violation on the chiral transition within the linear sigma model with two flavors of quarks. We also study how the CP-odd system is affected by the presence of a strong magnetic field, that is presumably generated in a non-central heavy ion collision. We find that both ingredients play an important role, influencing drastically the nature of the phase transition and the critical temperature.     

Normal heat conduction in a chain with a weak interparticle anharmonic potential

We analytically study heat conduction in a chain with an interparticle interaction V(x)= lambda[1-cos(x)] and harmonic on-site potential. We start with each site of the system connected to a Langevin heat bath, and investigate the case of small coupling for the interior sites in order to understand the behavior of the system with thermal reservoirs at the boundaries only. We study, in a perturbative analysis, the heat current in the steady state of the one-dimensional system with a weak interparticle potential. We obtain an expression for the thermal conductivity, compare the low and high temperature regimes, and show that, as we turn off the couplings with the interior heat baths, there is a "phase transition": Fourier's law holds only at high temperatures.     

Relaxation Property and Stability Analysis of the Quasispecies Models

The relaxation property of both Eigen model and Crow-Kimura model with a single peak fitness landscape is studied from phase transition point of view. We first analyze the eigenvalue spectra of the replication mutation matrices. For sufficiently long sequences, the almost crossing point between the largest and second-largest eigenvalues locates the error threshold at whichcritical slowing down behavior appears. We calculate the critical exponent in the limit of infinite sequence lengths and compare it with the result from numerical curve fittings at sufficiently long sequences. We find that for both models the relaxation time diverges with exponent 1 at the error (mutation) threshold point. Results obtained from both methods agree quite well. From the unlimited correlation length feature, the first order phase transition isfurther confirmed. Finally with linear stability theory, we show that the two model systems are stable for all ranges of mutation rate. The Eigen model is asymptotically stable in terms of mutant classes, and the Crow-Kimura model is completely stable.     

QCD phase transition with strange quark in wilson formalism for fermions

The nature of QCD phase transition is studied with massless up and down quarks and a light strange quark, using the Wilson formalism for quarks on a lattice with the temporal direction extensionN _t=4. We find that the phase transition is of first order for the physical strange quark mass.     

QCD phase transition with strange quark in wilson formalism for fermions

The nature of QCD phase transition is studied with massless up and down quarks and a light strange quark, using the Wilson formalism for quarks on a lattice with the temporal direction extensionN _t=4. We find that the phase transition is of first order for the physical strange quark mass.     

Slowing down of the relaxational dynamics at the ferroelectric phase transition in one-dimensional (TMTTF)2AsF6

We present measurements of the dielectric response of quasi one-dimensional system (TMTTF)₂AsF₆ in a wide temperature and frequency range. We provide a thorough characterization of the relaxational dynamics observed close to the ferroelectric-like transition at T_c=100 K. Our measurements, extending up to 100 MHz, reveal a continuous slowing down of the mean relaxation time when approaching T_c from high as well as from low temperatures. The simultaneous critical rise of the dielectric constant and relaxation time point to an explanation of the transition in terms of a classic ferroelectric scenario.     

Defect Formation in a Dynamic Transition

When a system that undergoes a continuous phase transition is swept through its critical point the initial symmetry is broken and domains are formed. Because of critical slowing down it is not possible to sweep adiabatically; the number of domains therefore depends on the rate of increase of the critical parameter. We give a summary of recent theoretical results for the number of defects produced as a function of how rapidly the transition point is passed. They are obtained from a simplified model, using a stochastic partial differential equation that is also solved numerically.     

The sphericalp-spin interaction spin-glass model

The relaxational dynamics for local spin autocorrelations of the sphericalp-spin interaction spin-glass model is studied in the mean field limit. In the high temperature and high external field regime, the dynamics is ergodic and similar to the behaviour in known liquid-glass transition models. In the static limit, we recover the replica symmetric solution for the long time correlation. This phase becomes unstable on a critical line in the (T, h) plane, where critical slowing down is observed with a cross-over to power law decay of the correlation function ∝t ^?ν, with an exponent ν varying along the critical line. For low temperatures and low fields, ergodicity in phase space is broken. For small fields the transition is discontinuous, and approaching this transition from above, two long time scales are seen to emerge. This dynamical transition lies at a somewhat higher temperature than the one obtained within replica theory. For larger fields the transition becomes continuous at some tricritical point. The low temperature phase with broken ergodicity is studied within a modified equilibrium theory and alternatively for adiabatic cooling across the transition line. This latter scheme yields rather detailed insight into the formation and structure of the ergodic components.     

Chiral phase transition from string theory

The low energy dynamics of a certain D-brane configuration in string theory is described at weak t'Hooft coupling by a nonlocal version of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. We study this system at finite temperature and strong t'Hooft coupling, using the string theory dual. We show that for sufficiently low temperatures chiral symmetry is broken, while for temperatures larger then the critical value, it gets restored. We compute the latent heat and observe that the phase transition is of the first order.     

High-frequency driven capillary flows speed up the gas-liquid phase transition in zero-gravity conditions

Under weightlessness conditions, the phase transition of fluids is driven only by slow capillary flows. We investigate the effect of high-frequency vibrations to reproduce some features of gravity effects and show that such vibrations can greatly modify the phase transition kinetics. The investigation is performed in H2 near its critical point (critical temperature 33 K) where critical slowing down enables the phase transition process to be carefully studied. Gravity effects are compensated in a strong magnetic field gradient.     

The equation of state of quarks and mesons in a renormalization group flow picture

Non-perturbative flow equations within an effective linear sigma model coupled to constituent quarks for two quark flavours are derived and solved. A heat kernel regularization is employed for a renormalization group improved effective potential. We determine the initial values of the coupling constants in the effective potential at zero temperature. Solving the evolution equations with the same initial values at finite temperature in the chiral limit, we find a second-order phase transition at T_c≈150 MeV. Due to the smooth decoupling of massive modes, we can directly link the low-temperature four-dimensional theory to the three-dimensional high-temperature theory. We calculate the equation of state in the chiral limit and for finite pion masses and determine universal critical exponents.     

Possible Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov superconducting state in CeCoIn5

We report specific heat measurements of the heavy fermion superconductor CeCoIn5 in the vicinity of the superconducting critical field H(c2), with magnetic fields in the [110], [100], and [001] directions, and at temperatures down to 50 mK. The superconducting phase transition changes from second to first order for fields above 10 T for H parallel [110] and H parallel [100]. In the same range of magnetic fields, we observe a second specific heat anomaly within the superconducting state. We interpret this anomaly as a signature of a Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) inhomogeneous superconducting state. We obtain similar results for H parallel [001], with the FFLO state occupying a smaller part of the phase diagram.     

Symmetry restoration in the asymmetric linear σ model at finite temperature

TheSU(2)xSU(2) asymmetric linear sigma model is studied in a mean field approximation. A first order transition persists up to a critical value of the symmetry breaking term where it terminates at a higher order point. For the physical value of the symmetry breaking we only see remmants of the phase transition.     

Dynamic phase transition from localized to spatiotemporal chaos in coupled circle map with feedback

We investigate coupled circle maps in the presence of feedback and explore various dynamical phases observed in this system of coupled high dimensional maps. We observe an interesting transition from localized chaos to spatiotemporal chaos. We study this transition as a dynamic phase transition. We observe that persistence acts as an excellent quantifier to describe this transition. Taking the location of the fixed point of circle map (which does not change with feedback) as a reference point, we compute a number of sites which have been greater than (less than) the fixed point until time t. Though local dynamics is high dimensional in this case, this definition of persistence which tracks a single variable is an excellent quantifier for this transition. In most cases, we also obtain a well defined persistence exponent at the critical point and observe conventional scaling as seen in second order phase transitions. This indicates that persistence could work as a good order parameter for transitions from fully or partially arrested phase. We also give an explanation of gaps in eigenvalue spectrum of the Jacobian of localized state.     

Langevin dynamics simulation of a one-dimensional linear spin chain with long-range interactions

In this paper we study the critical behavior of a simple one-dimensional rotor spin in the form of a linear chain with long-range interactions, using the mean field Langevin dynamics approach and in the presence of fluctuations added by a heat bath. We have computed the specific heat, the magnetic susceptibility, the Binder fourth-order cumulant, and the magnetization, and then we have calculated the critical exponents using finite-size scaling. In addition, we provide a relation between the thermal bath temperature and the temperature of the system. Our results confirm the existence of a second-order critical temperature in the one-dimensional chain of spins with long-range interaction.     

Out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the vortex glass in superconductors

We study the relaxational dynamics of flux lines in high-temperature superconductors with random pinning using Langevin dynamics. At high temperatures the dynamics is stationary and the fluctuation dissipation theorem (FDT) holds. At low temperatures the system does not equilibrate with its thermal bath: a simple multiplicative aging is found, the FDT is violated, and we find that an effective temperature characterizes the slow modes of the system. The generic features of the evolution--scaling laws--are dictated by those of the single elastic line in a random environment.     

Deconfining and chiral phase transitions in quantum chromodynamics at finite temperature

We give further arguments to support the claim of Svetitsky and Yaffe that the finite-temperature transition in 4-dimensional SU(N) gauge theories is in the universality class of 3-dimensional Z_N spin models. We show that this implies a smoothing out of the transition when quarks are added to the system as long as N ≠ 3. For N = 3 the pure gauge transition is expected to be first order and will be smoothed by quarks only if the quark contribution to the internal energy is larger than the latent heat of transition.     

QCD with two colors at finite baryon density at next-to-leading order

We study QCD with two colors and quarks in the fundamental representation at finite baryon density in the limit of light-quark masses. In this limit the free energy of this theory reduces to the free energy of a chiral Lagrangian which is based on the symmetries of the microscopic theory. In earlier work this Lagrangian was analyzed at the mean-field level and a phase transition to a phase of condensed diquarks was found at a chemical potential of half the diquark mass (which is equal to the pion mass). In this article we analyze this theory at next-to-leading order in chiral perturbation theory. We show that the theory is renormalizable and calculate the next-to-leading order free energy in both phases of the theory. By deriving a Landau–Ginzburg theory for the order parameter we show that the finite one-loop contribution and the next-to-leading order terms in the chiral Lagrangian do not qualitatively change the phase transition. In particular, the critical chemical potential is equal to half the next-to-leading order pion mass, and the phase transition is of second order.