My lecture notes about field theory refer to a tricritical point as a point in which a continuous phase transition line meets a discontinuous phase transition line. In the following it refers to a bicritical and tetracritical points. What is exactly counted in the prefix? Is the number of coexisting phases ? If yes, I must assume that in the tricritical case there is an implicit third phase transition line , and also that " bicritical" just means " critical". But it's too many assumptions to feel safe and in control. Can anyone provide at least some material to actually learn the meaning of the prefixes?
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
2
-
$\begingroup$ Here is a nice article with a more or less clear diagram showing the differences between bicritical and tetracritical journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.11.478 . But from my understanding you should not bother too much with the terminology, it's mostly an agglomeration of independent jargon, not particularly consistent. For example, a bicritical point refers to a point at which criticality is obtained for 2 different order parameters. Hence the BI (while technically, you are between 3 phases: disordered, ordered for order parameter 1 and ordered for order parameter 2) $\endgroup$– SyroccoCommented Jun 1 at 18:39
-
$\begingroup$ I would say that bicritical and tetracritical go hand in hand because the prefix concern the number of continuous line ending at some point (and not necessarily the number of phases one can observe). Whilz tricitical has been introduced in an other context by landau and refers to something slightly different: number of phases coexisting.. I'm not so sure though :) $\endgroup$– SyroccoCommented Jun 1 at 18:40
Add a comment
|