Journal
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS
Volume 120, Issue 23, Pages 11090-11099Publisher
AMER INST PHYSICS
DOI: 10.1063/1.1740756
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Catastrophe theory predicts that in certain limits universal relations should exist between barrier heights, curvatures and the positions of local maxima and minima on a potential or free energy surface. In the present work we investigate these relations for both first- and second-order phase transitions, revealing that the ideal ratios often hold quite well over a wide range of conditions. This elementary catastrophe theory is illustrated for the melting transition of an atomic cluster, the isotropic-to-nematic transition in a liquid crystal, and the ferromagnetic-to-paramagnetic phase transition in the two-dimensional Ising model. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.
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