First and Second Order Phase Transitions: Criticality, Continuity and Confusion
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Phase changes are ubiquitous in the world around us, from the obvious freezing and melting point of water, to the Curie temperature determining if a ferromagnetic material has a magnetic field. From Landau’s original description of second-order phase transitions in 1937, the analysis of systems at “criticality” has been seen in an incredible number of fields as diverse as geoscience and neuroscience. There are many underlying assumptions to measurements of a system at criticality, and understanding these are essential to using these metrics.