Energy landscape of the two-component Curie-Weiss-Potts model with three spins

TL;DR

This paper explores the complex energy landscape of a three-spin Curie-Weiss-Potts model, revealing a fundamentally different phase transition behavior compared to the two-spin case, with detailed analysis of synchronization phenomena.

Contribution

It extends the understanding of phase transitions from the two-spin to the three-spin Curie-Weiss-Potts model, highlighting new complex behaviors and phase diagrams.

Findings

Phase transition nature differs from the two-spin case

Energy landscape exhibits more complexity

Synchronization behavior varies with interaction strength

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the energy landscape of the two-component spin systems, known as the Curie-Weiss-Potts model, which is a generalization of the Curie-Weiss model consisting of $q\ge3$ spins. In the energy landscape of a multi-component model, the most important element is the relative strength between the inter-component interaction strength and the component-wise interaction strength. If the inter-component interaction is stronger than the component-wise interaction, we can expect all the components to be synchronized in the course of metastable transition. However, if the inter-component interaction is relatively weaker, then the components will be desynchronized in the course of metastable transition. For the two-component Curie-Weiss model, the phase transition from synchronization to desynchronization has been precisely characterized in studies owing to its mean-field nature. The purpose of this paper is to extend this result to the Curie-Weiss-Potts model with three spins. We observe that the nature of the phase transition for the three-spin case is entirely different from the two-spin case of the Curie-Weiss model, and the proof as well as the resulting phase diagram is fundamentally different and exceedingly complicated.