TOPICAL REVIEW: Rare region effects at classical, quantum and nonequilibrium phase transitions
By Thomas Vojta. 2006
265 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Rare regions, i.e., rare large spatial disorder fluctuations, can dramatically change the properties of a phase transition in a quenched disordered system. In generic classical equilibrium systems, they lead to an essential singularity, the so-called Griffiths singularity, of the free energy in the vicinity of the phase transition. Stronger effects can be observed at zero-temperature quantum phase transitions, at nonequilibrium phase transitions and in systems with correlated disorder. In some cases, rare regions can actually completely destroy the sharp phase transition by smearing. This topical review presents a unifying framework for rare region effects at weakly disordered classical, quantum and nonequilibrium phase transitions based on the effective dimensionality of the rare regions. Explicit examples include disordered classical Ising and Heisenberg models, insulating and metallic random quantum magnets, and the disordered contact process.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3267308f929815733974f5d3eb853e3fcef2cd48
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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
In Condensed Matter Physics
Citations in the corpus
- Colloquium: Criticality and dynamical scaling in living systems (2017, background): “Quenched disorder can alter the nature of phase transitions (Villa Mart́ın et al., 2014; Vojta, 2006) and can also induce novel phases absent in homogeneous systems.”
- Griffiths phases and the stretching of criticality in brain networks (2013, background): “[25] Vojta T (2006) Rare region effects at classical, quantum and nonequilibrium phase transitions.”