TY - JOUR
AU - Di Cairano, Loris
AU - Gori, Matteo
AU - Pettini, Marco
TI - Topology and Phase Transitions: A First Analytical Step towards the Definition of Sufficient Conditions
JO - Entropy
VL - 23
IS - 11
SN - 1099-4300
CY - Basel
PB - MDPI
M1 - FZJ-2021-06112
SP - 1414 -
PY - 2021
AB - Different arguments led to supposing that the deep origin of phase transitions has to be identified with suitable topological changes of potential related submanifolds of configuration space of a physical system. An important step forward for this approach was achieved with two theorems stating that, for a wide class of physical systems, phase transitions should necessarily stem from topological changes of energy level submanifolds of the phase space. However, the sufficiency conditions are still a wide open question. In this study, a first important step forward was performed in this direction; in fact, a differential equation was worked out which describes how entropy varies as a function of total energy, and this variation is driven by the total energy dependence of a topology-related quantity of the relevant submanifolds of the phase space. Hence, general conditions can be in principle defined for topology-driven loss of differentiability of the entropy.
LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6 - pmid:34828112
UR - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000724133900001
DO - DOI:10.3390/e23111414
UR - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/904542
ER -