2023/08/01 by Amnon Aharony, Aharony, Amnon
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Material Dynamics and Properties #Phase Equilibria and Thermodynamics #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.stat-mech #hep-th #nanoparticles nucleation surface interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2308.00586
published as Physica C 613, 1354336 (2023) · Submitted to Physica C, special issue dedicated to K. A. Muller. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2201.08252
arxiv created 2023/08/01 · openalex publication_date 2023/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28 · arxiv updated 2026/08/06
This paper is dedicated to the memory of Professor K. Alex Muller. After describing our personal and scientific encounters since 1974, I concentrate on the many puzzles whinch appeared in our discussions and collaborations, involving the interplay between theory and experiments on the critical behavior of cubic perovskites which undergo (second or first) order transitions to a lower symmetry phases (trigonal or tetragonal). The conclusion, reached only very recently, is that (although beginning with the same cubic symmetry) the two types of transitions belong to two distinct universality classes: under [100] stress, the cubic to trigonal transition exhibits a tetracritical phase diagram, with cubic exponents, while the cubic to tetragonal transition exhibit an intermediate bicritical phase diagram, but asymptotically the bicritical point turns into a triple point, with three first order lines. To test these conclusions, it is suggested to measure the effective critical exponents as the temperature approaches criticality.