Landau theory


Landau theory in physics is a theory that Lev Landau introduced in an attempt to formulate a general theory of continuous phase transitions. It can also be adapted to systems under externally-applied fields, and used as a quantitative model for discontinuous transitions.

Mean-field formulation (no long-range correlation)

Landau was motivated to suggest that the free energy of any system should obey two conditions:
Given these two conditions, one can write down a phenomenological expression for the free energy as a Taylor expansion in the order parameter.

Second-order transitions

Consider a system that breaks some symmetry below a phase transition, which is characterized by an order parameter. This order parameter is a measure of the order before and after a phase transition; the order parameter is often zero above some critical temperature and non-zero below the critical temperature. In a simple ferromagnetic system like the Ising model, the order parameter is characterized by the net magnetization, which becomes spontaneously non-zero below a critical temperature. In Landau theory, one considers a free energy functional that is an analytic function of the order parameter. In many systems with certain symmetries, the free energy will only be a function of even powers of the order parameter, for which it can be expressed as the series expansion
In general, there are higher order terms present in the free energy, but it is a reasonable approximation to consider the series to fourth order in the order parameter, as long as the order parameter is small. For the system to be thermodynamically stable, the coefficient of the highest even power of the order parameter must be positive, so. For simplicity, one can assume that, a constant, near the critical temperature. Furthermore, since changes sign above and below the critical temperature, one can likewise expand, where it is assumed that for the high-temperature phase while for the low-temperature phase, for a transition to occur. With these assumptions, minimizing the free energy with respect to the order parameter requires
The solution to the order parameter that satisfies this condition is either, or
It is clear that this solution only exists for, otherwise is the only solution. Indeed, is the minimum solution for, but the solution minimizes the free energy for, and thus is a stable phase. Furthermore, the order parameter follows the relation
below the critical temperature, indicating a critical exponent for this Landau mean-theory model.
The free-energy will vary as a function of temperature given by
From the free energy, one can compute the specific heat,
which has a finite jump at the critical temperature of size. This finite jump is therefore not associated with a discontinuity that would occur if the system absorbed latent heat, since. It is also noteworthy that the discontinuity in the specific heat is related to the discontinuity in the second derivative of the free energy, which is characteristic of a second-order phase transition. Furthermore, the fact that the specific heat has no divergence or cusp at the critical point indicates its critical exponent for is.

Applied fields

In many systems, one can consider a perturbing field that couples linearly to the order parameter. For example, in the case of a classical dipole moment, the energy of the dipole-field system is. In the general case, one can assume an energy shift of due to the coupling of the order parameter to the applied field, and the Landau free energy will change as a result:
In this case, the minimization condition is
One immediate consequence of this equation and its solution is that, if the applied field is non-zero, then the magnetization is non-zero at any temperature. This implies there is no longer a spontaneous symmetry breaking that occurs at any temperature. Furthermore, some interesting thermodynamic and universal quantities can be obtained this above condition. For example, at the critical temperature where, one can find the dependence of the order parameter on the external field:
indicating a critical exponent.
Furthermore, from the above condition, it is possible to find the zero-field susceptibility, which must satisfy
In this case, recalling in the zero-field case that at low temperatures, while for temperatures above the critical temperature, the zero-field susceptibility therefore has the following temperature dependence:
which is reminiscent of the Curie-Weiss law for the temperature dependence of magnetic susceptibility in magnetic materials, and yields the mean-field critical exponent.

First-order transitions

While commonly used to study second-order transitions, Landau theory can also be used to study first-order transitions. To model this, one can consider taking the free-energy expansion to sixth-order ,
where again. At some transition temperature, there will be a change in the order parameter from being zero to being non-zero. At high temperatures above some ``transition temperature", this free energy functional is everywhere positive and concave up, and the order parameter is zero. At the transition temperature, the order parameter will no longer be zero; furthermore, it will occur when the free energy is zero, and furthermore this point should be a local minimum to be a stable solution. Extremizing the free energy with respect to the order parameter for these conditions yields two equations,
which are satisfied when. Using the same equations, it is also required that. From this comes two important results; first, the order parameter suffers a discontinuous jump at this transition temperature, characteristic of a first-order transition. Furthermore, the transition temperature at which the order parameter changes is not the same as the critical temperature of the system, where.
At temperatures below the transition temperature,, the order parameter is given by
which is plotted to the right. This shows the clear discontinuity associated with the order parameter as a function of the temperature. To further demonstrate that the transition is first-order, one can show that the free energy for this order parameter is continuous at the transition temperature, but its first derivative suffers from a discontinuity.

Applications

It was known experimentally that the liquid–gas coexistence curve and the ferromagnet magnetization curve both exhibited a scaling relation of the form, where was mysteriously the same for both systems. This is the phenomenon of universality. It was also known that simple liquid–gas models are exactly mappable to simple magnetic models, which implied that the two systems possess the same symmetries. It then followed from Landau theory why these two apparently disparate systems should have the same critical exponents, despite having different microscopic parameters. It is now known that the phenomenon of universality arises for other reasons. In fact, Landau theory predicts the incorrect critical exponents for the Ising and liquid–gas systems.
The great virtue of Landau theory is that it makes specific predictions for what kind of non-analytic behavior one should see when the underlying free energy is analytic. Then, all the non-analyticity at the critical point, the critical exponents, are because the equilibrium value of the order parameter changes non-analytically, as a square root, whenever the free energy loses its unique minimum.
The extension of Landau theory to include fluctuations in the order parameter shows that Landau theory is only strictly valid near the critical points of ordinary systems with spatial dimensions higher than 4. This is the upper critical dimension, and it can be much higher than four in more finely tuned phase transition. In Mukhamel's analysis of the isotropic Lifschitz point, the critical dimension is 8. This is because Landau theory is a mean field theory, and does not include long-range correlations.
This theory does not explain non-analyticity at the critical point, but when applied to superfluid and superconductor phase transition, Landau's theory provided inspiration for another theory, the Ginzburg–Landau theory of superconductivity.

Including long-range correlations

Consider the Ising model free energy above. Assume that the order parameter and external magnetic field,, may have spatial variations. Now, the free energy of the system can be assumed to take the following modified form:
where is the total spatial dimensionality. So,
Assume that, for a localized external magnetic perturbation, the order parameter takes the form. Then,
That is, the fluctuation in the order parameter corresponds to the order-order correlation. Hence, neglecting this fluctuation corresponds to neglecting the order-order correlation, which diverges near the critical point.
One can also solve for, from which the scaling exponent,, for correlation length can deduced. From these, the Ginzburg criterion for the upper critical dimension for the validity of the Ising mean-field Landau theory can be calculated as:
In our current Ising model, mean-field Landau theory gives and so, it is valid only for spatial dimensionality greater than or equal to 4. This modified version of mean-field Landau theory is sometimes also referred to as the Landau-Ginzburg theory of Ising phase transitions. As a clarification, there is also a Landau-Ginzburg theory specific to superconductivity phase transition, which also includes fluctuations.

Footnotes