Long-range four-body interactions in the Hamiltonian mean field model

Abstract

In this paper, a Hamiltonian mean field model with long-range four-body interactions is proposed. The model describes a long-range mean-field system in which N unit-mass particles move on a unit circle. Each particle theta_i interacts with any three other particles through an infinite-range cosine potential with an attractive interaction (epsilon > 0). By applying a method that remaps the average phase of global particle pairs onto a new unit circle, and using the saddle-point technique, the partition function is solved analytically after introducing four-body interactions, yielding expressions for the free energy f and the energy per particle U. These results were further validated through numerical simulations. The results show that the system undergoes a second-order phase transition at the critical energy U_c. Specifically, the critical energy corresponds to U_c = 0.32 when the coupling constant epsilon = 5, and U_c = 0.63 when epsilon = 10. Finally, we calculated the system's largest Lyapunov exponent lambda and kinetic energy fluctuations Sigma through numerical simulations. It is found that the peak of the largest Lyapunov exponent lambda occurs slightly below the critical energy U_c, which is consistent with the point of maximum kinetic energy fluctuations Sigma. And there is a scaling law of Sigma / N^(1/2) proportional to lambda between them.