Surface critical phenomena at first-order phase transitions

Surface Critical Phenomena at First-order Phase Transitions

Frequently, first-order phase transitions in solids are characterized by the coexistence of a disordered phase and several ordered phases. Near such a transition, the disordered phase may appear in the surface region of the crystal even though the bulk crystal remains in one of its ordered states. This leads to several critical effects which are characterized by critical exponents. Recent exper...

Critical Phenomena at Interfaces Phase Transitions at Quantum Surfaces

Tlre qnantum systems helium and hydrogen provide a versatile testing ground for studying interfacial phenomena. As examples, both some properties of surface< near thermodynamic equilibrium, like layering and wetting, and uonequilibrium states of qucnch-condensed disordered films are discussed. A further topic is the development of macroscopic instabilities of interfaces under external perturbat...

Introduction to Phase Transitions and Critical Phenomena

Quantum first order phase transitions

The scaling theory of critical phenomena has been successfully extended for classical first order transitions even though the correlation length does not diverge in these transitions. In this paper we apply the scaling ideas to quantum first order transitions. The usefulness of this approach is illustrated treating the problems of a superconductor coupled to a gauge field and of a biquadratic H...

First-order dynamical phase transitions.

Recently, dynamical phase transitions have been identified based on the nonanalytic behavior of the Loschmidt echo in the thermodynamic limit [Heyl et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 135704 (2013)]. By introducing conditional probability amplitudes, we show how dynamical phase transitions can be further classified, both mathematically, and potentially in experiment. This leads to the definition of f...