Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-theoretical-physics-i-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/4/a/solution

A Landau free energy is a coarse-grained thermodynamic potential expressed as a function of a proposed macroscopic order parameter. Its coefficients include microscopic and thermal effects already averaged over. At fixed external thermodynamic conditions, equilibrium selects its global minimum; other local minima can represent metastable states. It is not the internal energy of a single microscopic magnetic configuration. Here the real scalar represents a selected component of magnetization: zero describes the disordered state, while nonzero values distinguish two oppositely ordered states.
Every power is even, so the internal discrete symmetry is
For a magnetic order parameter, this represents reversal of the magnetization, as under time reversal in zero applied magnetic field. A nonzero field would generally add an odd term and break this symmetry explicitly. This scalar model has no continuous internal rotation symmetry; physical rotational symmetry of a vector magnet is not implied by treating one real component. The condition makes the polynomial bounded below at large .
For the requested ordered phase on cooling, take the usual implicit assumption , and write . If the temperature directions reverse; if this expansion has no temperature-driven transition. The source explicitly states only .

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