The transition feature of a ferroelectric thin film with a seeding layer is studied based on the transverse Ising model. The influence of the seeding layer on the transition behavior of a ferroelectric thin film is investigated systemically, and the effect of the interaction parameters for the...

The Ising model in a transverse field, which involves quantum tunneling in double potential wells, has been used for many years to describe ferroelectric phase transitions. An alternative model previously published takes into account the effect of a non-negligible zero-point energy in the double...

The liquid crystal phase transitions for a classical fluid mixture of hard ellipsoids with aspect ratios 10 : 1 and 1 : 10, and equal volume, have been studied at two compositions using Onsager theories and by computer simulation. The original Onsager from of the Helmholtz free energy contains...

We study the small-world network model, which mimics the transition between regular-lattice and random-lattice behavior in social networks of increasing size. We contend that the model displays a normal continuous phase transition with a divergent correlation length as the degree of randomness...

The critical boundaries separating ordered from chaotic behavior in randomly wired S-state networks are calculated. These networks are a natural generalization of random Boolean net and are proposed as an extended approach to genetic regulatory systems, sets of cells in different states or...

In this paper we study the small-world network model of Watts and Strogatz, which mimics some aspects of the structure of networks of social interactions. We argue that there is one non-trivial length-scale in the model, analogous to the correlation length in other systems, which is well-defined...

A recent study linked the behavior of buying and selling in financial markets to the phenomenon of phase transitions that occur in physical systems with many interacting components. We urge caution with such findings. In particular, we show that the statistical technique employed in the study...

Influence of surrounding matter on the properties of clusters is considered by an approach combining the methods of statistical and quantum mechanics. A cluster is treated as a bound N-particle system and surrounding matter as thermostat. It is shown that, despite arbitrary strong interactions...