When topology triggers a phase transition

Abstract

Two mathematical mechanisms, responsible for the generation of a thermodynamic singularity, are individuated. For a class of short-range, confining potentials, a topology change in some family of configuration space submanifolds is the only possible such mechanism. Two examples of systems in which the phase transition is not accompanied by a such topology change are discussed. The first one is a model with long-range interactions, namely the mean-field phi^4-model, the second example is a one-dimensional system with a non-confining potential energy function. For both these systems, the thermodynamic singularity is generated by a maximization over one variable (or one discrete index) of a smooth function, although the context in which the maximization occurs is very different.