Energy landscape and phase transitions in the self-gravitating ring model

TL;DR

This paper investigates phase transitions in a simplified gravitational model using energy landscape analysis, successfully identifying known transitions and predicting a new one, thus advancing understanding of gravitational systems.

Contribution

The study applies a novel energy landscape criterion to a self-gravitating ring model, revealing known and potential new phase transitions analytically.

Findings

Identifies the known homogeneous-clustered phase transition

Predicts a previously unknown phase transition

Provides analytical support for the energy landscape criterion

Abstract

We apply a recently proposed criterion for the existence of phase transitions, which is based on the properties of the saddles of the energy landscape, to a simplified model of a system with gravitational interactions, referred to as the self-gravitating ring model. We show analytically that the criterion correctly singles out the phase transition between a homogeneous and a clustered phase and also suggests the presence of another phase transition, not previously known. On the basis of the properties of the energy landscape we conjecture on the nature of the latter transition.