Maynooth University Mathematical Physics Seminar -- Macroscopic Degeneracy and Scaling at a First Order Transition -- Des Johnston

Title:
Macroscopic Degeneracy and Scaling at a First Order Transition

Abstract:
In general there is only one kind of scaling at a first order transition, rather than the various universality classes found at second and higher order transitions and it was only realized relatively recently that  boundary conditions could affect first order scaling.

We discuss how macroscopic degeneracy of the low-temperature phase can also change the finite-size scaling corrections at a first-order transition, taking the case of an Ising model with plaquette interactions as a example. We also discuss the fallacy of assuming that unexpected results from a PhD student's simulations are necessarily wrong.