Critical Hysteresis

Abstract

Hysteresis is observed at second order phase transitions. Universal scaling formulæ for the areas of hysteresis loops are written down. Critical exponents are defined, and related to other exponents for static and dynamic critical phenomena. These relations are verified with Langevin dynamics in both the critical and tricritical mean-field models. A finite-size scaling relation is tested in the two-dimensional Ising model with heat-bath dynamics. (Shar file; 2 figures created through dvips directives from 4 PS files included)