Tricritical point

A tricritical point is where a line of continuous transitions meets a line of first-order transitions; in a ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ Landau expansion both quadratic and quartic coefficients vanish and a positive sextic term stabilizes the free energy.

For the sextic Landau free energy $V=r{M}^2/2+v{M}^6/6-hM$, $v>0$, with $r$ linear in reduced temperature, the equation of state is $h=rM+v{M}^5$. Its ordered zero-field minimum satisfies $M^4=-r/v$, the inverse magnetic susceptibility is $4|r|$ below the transition and $r$ above, and the critical isotherm satisfies $h=v{M}^5$. The minimized singular free-energy density is $-|r{|}^{3/2}/(3\sqrt{v})$ below and zero above. These facts give the displayed mean-field critical exponents, obeying both the Rushbrooke scaling relation and Widom scaling relation. Both the quadratic and quartic coefficients must be tuned; a generic path with a positive quartic coefficient instead has ordinary critical behavior. Fluctuations change the result below the tricritical upper critical dimension three, and marginal corrections can add logarithms at three.

For an even sextic Landau free energy perturbed by a conjugate field, a tricritical wing is a phase coexistence surface at nonzero field between ordered minima of different magnitudes. Two symmetry-related wings emerge from the three-phase line at zero field and terminate at ordinary critical edges. They meet the zero-field ordered coexistence sheet at the tricritical point.

For $V=r{m}^2/2+u{m}^4/4+v{m}^6/6-hm$ with $v>0$, the displayed line has three global minima, $m=0$ and $m=\pm \sqrt{-3u/(4v)}$. The factorization $V=(v/6)m^2(m^2+3u/(4v){)}^2$ proves their coexistence. Two nonzero-field tricritical wings and the zero-field ordered coexistence sheet meet along this line. Its order-parameter discontinuity tends to zero as it terminates at the tricritical point.

Take two nonnegative coexisting minima $a\le b$, put $s=a+b$ and $p=ab$, and fix $v>0$. For the sextic Landau free energy with quadratic, quartic, sextic and linear terms, equal stationary minimum values occur atAt these coefficients,Thus both are global minima. The case $a=0$ gives the zero-field three-phase line, including the negative minimum; the limit $a=b$ gives the tricritical wing critical edge. Reflecting $M,h$ gives the negative-field wing.

For $f=r{M}^2/2+u{M}^4/4+v{M}^6/6-hM$ with $v>0$, the ordinary critical edge of a tricritical wing satisfies $f^{(1)}=f^{(2)}=f^{(3)}=0$. For $u<0$, $M_c^2=-3u/(10v)$, $r_c=9u^2/(20v)$ and $h_c=6u^2{M}_c/(25v)$. Its fourth derivative is $-12u>0$. The two signs of $M_c$ give the two wings.

For the stable sextic Landau free energy $f=r{m}^2/2+q{m}^4/4+s{m}^6/6-hm$, $s>0$, rescaling $m=(|r|/s{)}^{1/4}\psi$ gives the minimized order-parameter contribution $f_{\mathrm{eq}}=|r{|}^{3/2}{s}^{-1/2}{\Phi }_{\sigma }(X,Y)$, where $\sigma =\mathrm{sgn}r$, $X=q/(|r|s{)}^{1/2}$ and $Y=h{s}^{1/4}/|r{|}^{5/4}$. The two functions are ${\Phi }_{\sigma }={\min }_{\psi }(\sigma {\psi }^2/2+X{\psi }^4/4+{\psi }^6/6-Y\psi )$. In particular ${\Phi }_{-}(0,0)=-1/3$, but ${\Phi }_{+}(0,0)=0$. These separate branches and removal of smooth background terms are necessary when using the homogeneous form to infer mean-field critical exponents.

On the ordered branch of tricritical crossover scaling, at zero field and $X\to +\infty$, the minimizing square is $a={\psi }^2=(\sqrt{X^2+4}-X)/2\sim 1/X$. Its stationarity relation $Xa+a^2=1$ gives ${\Phi }_{-}(X,0)=-a/4-a^3/12\sim -1/(4X)$. Thus the minimized free-energy density becomes $-r^2/(4q)$ for fixed $q>0$ as $r\uparrow 0$, recovering the ordinary quartic continuous phase transition and its heat-capacity critical exponent $\alpha =0$. Replacing the scaling function by a nonzero constant in this limit would give an incorrect exponent.

In three dimensions, after tuning the quadratic and quartic relevant operators, the positive sextic coupling has a renormalization-group beta function $d\lambda /ds=-C{\lambda }^2+\cdots$ with $C>0$ for increasing length scale $s$. The Wick contractions connecting two sextic vertices with three propagators give the primitive logarithmic correction. The interaction is marginally irrelevant.