Direct integration over solid angle givesThus . Choosing the usual alternating sign convention,Apply successively and divide by its ladder coefficient at each step. Explicitly,The normalization follows because the product of the squared ladder coefficients is . This constructs every magnetic sublevel, including negative .
For positive rates the three states communicate, so the finite continuous-time Markov chain has a unique stationary probability vector. The first and third components of giveThese two edge-balance relations and normalization yield, with ,Their sum is one and each is nonnegative. The middle balance equation then follows from the other two, as expected from probability conservation. A line graph has no cycle that could carry a nonzero stationary circulation: each edge's forward and backward stationary traffic balances even if the bare rates differ. If some rates vanish, the process need not be an irreducible Markov chain and its stationary distribution need not be unique. The displayed expression remains valid when its denominator is nonzero and its limits select the communicating class reached, but it must not be used as a unique late-time law when disconnected closed classes retain dependence on the initial state.
For an analytic, local Landau theory with independent global rotations of the magnetization vector, a uniform scalar potential can depend only on . Keeping terms through fourth order in the field, dropping an additive constant, and retaining the leading isotropic positive gradient term gives the displayed quadratic-plus-quartic functional. The stiffness has been absorbed into the normalization of length and field. Higher powers and higher derivatives are neglected in this long-wavelength approximation.
The quartic truncation is stable at large when . The coefficient changes sign at the mean-field critical point; close to it one commonly writes . If , higher stabilizing powers are essential, so the displayed truncation alone cannot determine a stable first-order phase diagram. For and it is likewise unbounded.
For , spatially uniform stationary points obey . The global minima areThe corresponding minimum free-energy density is zero and , respectively. The disordered phase gives way continuously to a ferromagnet with an arbitrary direction of magnetization. At this mean-field transition the amplitude vanishes as ; long-wavelength critical fluctuations can modify mean-field exponents in three dimensions.[ref]
Statistical Field Theory by David Tong. §4.2, vector order parameter and rotationally invariant Landau expansion
Insert the two observed spins into the configuration sum for the transfer matrix for a classical spin chain trace. Since the diagonal matrix has entry on state , multiplication by it at positions and produces the factor . The trace representation is consequentlyThere are exactly transfer factors: . The distance between the two insertions is bonds, not . Cyclicity of the trace combines the outside factors and gives the equivalent expressionwhich makes independence of the starting site manifest. No assumption that commutes with is used; in general it does not. For the two insertions multiply to the identity and , a useful normalization check.
