Elsevier

Physics Letters B

Volume 747, 30 July 2015, Pages 125-128
Physics Letters B

Information-entropic signature of the critical point

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2015.05.058Get rights and content
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Abstract

We investigate the critical behavior of continuous (second-order) phase transitions in the context of (2+1)-dimensional Ginzburg–Landau models with a double-well effective potential. In particular, we show that the recently-proposed configurational entropy (CE)—a measure of the spatial complexity of the order parameter in momentum space based on its Fourier-mode decomposition—can be used to identify the critical point. We compute the CE for different temperatures and show that large spatial fluctuations near the critical point (Tc)—characterized by a divergent correlation length—lead to a sharp decrease in the associated configurational entropy. We further show that the CE density goes from a scale-free to an approximate scaling behavior |k|5/3 as the critical point is approached. We reproduce the behavior of the CE at criticality with a percolating many-bubble model.

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