A Solution to the Temperature Evolution of Multi-well Free-energy Landscape

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple theoretical solution to model the temperature evolution of multi-well free-energy landscapes, which is crucial for understanding phase transitions and critical phenomena in various materials.

Contribution

It proposes a novel approach based on Boltzmann thermal mixing among parabolic potentials to address a longstanding challenge in free-energy landscape analysis.

Findings

Successfully applied to multiple materials including Nb, YBa2Cu3O7-x, and BiFeO3.

Provides a unified framework for temperature-dependent free-energy analysis.

Demonstrates broad applicability and accuracy of the method.

Abstract

It has been a grand challenge to resolve the temperature evolution of multi-well free-energy landscape which is fundamentally relevant to phase transitions and associated critical phenomena as listed by Ginzburg [Rev. Mod. Phys. 76 (2004) 981]. To address this challenge, here we provide a simple solution based on a priori concept of Boltzmann thermal mixing among multiple parabolic potentials. The success and the impact of the present approach have been extensively demonstrated using a variety of materials, including Nb, YBa2Cu3O(7-x), Ca3Ru2O7, Ni, BiFeO3, and PbTiO3.