Phase diagram of a generalized ABC model on the interval

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the phase diagram of a generalized one-dimensional ABC model with non-symmetric interactions, identifying conditions for phase transitions from uniform to periodic density profiles.

Contribution

It extends the ABC model by considering non-cyclic interactions and characterizes the phase transition behavior in the thermodynamic limit.

Findings

Unique density profiles for most parameters

Second order phase transition at a critical temperature

Explicit expression for the critical temperature

Abstract

We study the equilibrium phase diagram of a generalized ABC model on an interval of the one-dimensional lattice: each site $i=1,...,N$ is occupied by a particle of type $\a=A,B,C,$ with the average density of each particle species $N_\a/N=r_\a$ fixed. These particles interact via a mean field non-reflection-symmetric pair interaction. The interaction need not be invariant under cyclic permutation of the particle species as in the standard ABC model studied earlier. We prove in some cases and conjecture in others that the scaled infinite system $N\rw\infty$, $i/N\rw x\in[0,1]$ has a unique density profile $\p_\a(x)$ except for some special values of the $r_\a$ for which the system undergoes a second order phase transition from a uniform to a nonuniform periodic profile at a critical temperature $T_c=3\sqrt{r_A r_B r_C}/2\pi$.