What's new in TGD inspired view about phase transitions?

The comment of Ulla mentioned Kosterlitz-Thouless phases transition and its infinite order. I am not a condensed matter physicist so that my knowledge and understanding are rather rudimentary and I had to go to Wikipedia. I realized that I have not payed attention to the classification of types of phase transitions, while speaking of quantum criticality. Also the relationship of ZEO inspired description of phase transitions to that of standard positive energy ontology has remained poorly understood. In the following I try to represent various TGD inspired visions about phase transitions and criticality in organized manner and relate them to the standard description.

About thermal and quantum phase transitions

It is good to beging with something concrete. Wikipedia article lists examples about different types of phase transitions. These phase transitions are thermodynamical.

1. In first order phase thermodynamical phase transitions heat is absorbed and phases appear as mixed. Melting of ice and boiling of water represent the basic examples. Breaking of continuous translation symmetry occurs in crystallization and symmetry is smaller at low temperature. One speaks of spontaneous symmetry breaking: thermodynamical fluctuations are not able to destroy the configuration breaking the symmetry.
   
   
2. Second order phase transitions are also called continuous and they also break continuous symmetries. Susceptility diverges, correlation range is infinite, and power-law behaviour applies to correlations. Ferromagnetic, super-conducting, and superfluid transitions are examples. Conformal field theory predics power-law behavior and infinite correlation length. Infinite susceptility means that system is very sensitive to external perturbations. First order phase transition becomes second order transition at critical point. Here the reduction by strong form of holography might make sense for high Tc superconductors at least (they are effectively 2-D).
   
   
3. Infinite order phase transitions are also possible. Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition occurring in 2-D systems allowing conformal symmetries represents this kind of transition. These phase transitions are continuous but do not break continuous symmetries as usually.
   
   
4. There are also liquid-glass phase transitions. Their existence is hypothetical. The final state depends on the history of transition. Glass state itself is more like an ongoing phase transition rather than phase.
   

These phase transitions are thermal and driven by thermal fluctuations. Also quantum phase transitions are possible.

1. According to the standard definition they are possible only at zero temperature and driven by quantum fluctuations. For instance, gauge coupling strength would be analogous to quantum temperature. This is a natural definition in standard ontology, in which thermodynamics and quantum theory are descriptions at different levels.
   

   Quantum TGD can be seen as a square root of thermodynamics in a well-defined sense and it is possible to speak about quantum phase transitions also at finite temperature if one can identify the temperature like parameter characterizing single particle states as a kind of holographic representations of the ordinary temperature.
   
   

2. The traces of quantum phase transitions are argued to be visible also at finite temperatures if the energy gap
   ℏ×ω is larger than the thermal energy: ℏω>T. In TGD framework Planck constant has a spectrum h_eff/h= n and allows very large values. This allows quantum phase transitions even at room temperature and TGD inspired quantum biology relies crucially on this. What is of special interest that also ordinary thermal phase transitions might be accompanied by quantum phase transitions occurring at the level of magnetic body and perhaps even inducing the ordinary thermal phase transition.
   
   
3. Quantum critical phase transitions occur at critical point and are second order phase transitions so that susceptibility diverges and system is highly sensitive to perturbations and so in wide range around critical temperature (zero in standard theory). Long range fluctuations are generated and this conforms with the TGD vision about the role of large h_eff phases and generalized conformal symmetry: which also implies that the region around criticality is wide (exponentially decaying correlations replaced with power law correlations).
   
   

TGD suggests some examples of quantum phase transition like phenomena.

1. Bose-Einstein (BE) condensate consisting of bosons in same state would represent a typical quantum phase. I have been talking a lot about cyclotron BE condensates at dark magnetic flux tubes. The bosonic particles would be in the same cyclotron state. One can consider also the analogs of Cooper pairs with members at flux tubes of a pair of parallel flux tubes with magnetic fields in same or opposite direction. One member at each tube having spin 1 or zero. This would give rise to high Tc superconductivity.
   
   
2. One natural mechanism of quantum phase transition would be BE condensation to a new single particle state. The rate for an additions of new particle to condensate is proportional to N+1 and disappearance of particle from it to N, where N is the number of particles in condensate. The net rate for BE condensation is difference of these and non-vanishing.
   

   Quantum fluctuations induce phase transition between states of this condensate at criticality. For instance, cyclotron condensate could make a spontaneous phase transition to a lower energy state by a change of cyclotron energy state and energy would be emitted as a dark cyclotron radiation. This kind of dark photon radiation could in turn induce cyclotron transition to a higher cyclotron state at some other flux tube. If NMP holds true it could pose restrictions for the occurrence of transitions since one expects that negentropy is reduced. The transitions should involve negentropy transfer from the system.
   

   The irradiation of cyclotron BE condensate with some cyclotron frequency could explain cyclotron phase transition increasing the energy of the cyclotron state. This kind of transition could explain the effecs of ELF em fields on vertebrate brain in terms of cyclotron phase transition and perhaps serving as a universal communication and control mechanism in the communications of the magnetic body with biological body and other magnetic bodies. The perturbation of microtubules by an oscillating voltage (see this) has been reported by the group of Bandyonophyay to induce what I have interpreted as quantum phase transition (see this).
   

   External energy feed is essential and dark cyclotron radiation or generalized Josephson radiation from cell membrane acting as generalized Josephson junction and propagating along flux tubes could provide it. Cyclotron energy is scaled up by h_eff/h and would be of the order of biophoton energy in TGD inspired model of living matter and considerably above thermal energy at physiological temperature.
   
   

3. Also quantum phase transitions affecting the value of h_eff are possible. When h_eff is reduced and frequency is not changed, energy is liberated and the transition proceeds without external energy feed (NMP might pose restrictions). Another option is increase of h_eff and reduce the frequency in such a manner that that single particle energies are not changed. One can imagine many other possibilities since also p-adic length scale leading to a change of mass scale could change.
   

   The model for cold fusion relies on a process, which is analogous to quantum phase transition. Protons from the exclusion zones (EZs) of Pollack are transferred to dark protons at magnetic flux tubes outside EZ and part of dark protons sequences transform by dark weak decays and dark weak boson exchanges to neutrons so that beta stable dark nuclei are obtained with binding energy much smaller than nuclear binding energy. This could be seen as dark nuclear fusion and quantum analog of the ordinary thermal nuclear fusion. The transformation of dark nuclei to ordinary nuclei by h_eff reducing phase transition would liberate huge energy if allowed by NMP and explain the reported biofusion.
   
   

4. Energetics is clearly an important factor (in ordinary phase transitions for open system thermal energy feed is present). The above considerations assume that ordinary positive energy ontology effectively applies. ZEO allows to consider a more science fictive possibility. In ZEO energy is conserved when one considers single zero energy state as a time evolution of positive energy state. If single particle realizes square root of thermodynamics, one has superposition of zero energy states for which single particle states appear as pairs of positive and negative energy states with various energies: each state in superposition respects energy conservation. In this kind of situation one can consider the possibility that temperature increases and average single particle energy increases. In positive energy ontology this is impossible without energy feed but in ZEO it is not excluded. I do not understand the situation well enough to decide whether some condition could prevent this. Note however that in TGD inspired cosmology energy conservation holds only in given scale (given CD) and apparent energy non-conservation would result by this kind of mechanism.
   
   

Question related to TGD inspired description of phase transitions

The natural questions are for instance following ones.

1. The general classification of thermodynamical phase transitions is in terms of order: the order of the lowest discontinuous derivative of the free energy with respect to some of its arguments. In catastrophe theoretic description one has a hierarchy of criticalities of free energy as function of control variables (also other behavior variables than free energy are possible) and phase transitions with phase transitions corresponding to catastrophe containing catastrophe.... such that the order increases. For intance, for cusp catatrophe one has lambda-shaped critical line and critical point at its tip. Thom's catastrophe theory description is mathematically very attractive but I think that it has problems at experimental side. It indeed applies to flow dynamics defined by a gradient of potential and thermodynamics is something different.
   

   In TGD framework the sum of Kähler function defined by real Kähler action in Euclidian space-time regions and imaginy Kähler action from Minkowskian space-time regions defining a complex quanty replaced free energy. This is in accordance with the vision that quantum TGD can be seen as a complex square root of thermodynamics. Situation is now infinite-dimensional and catastrophe set would be also infinite-D. The hierarchy of isomorphic super-conformal algebras defines an infinite hierarchy of criticalities with levels labelled by Planck constants and catastrophe theoretic description seems to generalize.
   

   Does this general description of phase transitions at the level of dark magnetic body (field body is more general notion but I will talk about magnetic body (MB) in the sequel) allow to understand also thermodynamical phase transitions as being induced from those for dark matter at MB?
   
   

2. Quantum TGD can be formally regarded as a square root of thermodynamics. Does this imply "thermal holography" meaning that single particle states can represent ensemble state as square root of the thermal state of ensemble. Could one unify the notions of thermal and quantum phase transition and include also the phase transitions changing h_eff? Could MB make this possible?
   
   
3. How does the TGD description relate to the standard description? TGD predicts that conformal gauge symmetries correspond to a fractal hierarchy of isomorphic conformal sub-algebras. Only the lowest level with maximal conformal symmetry matters in standard theory. Are the higher "dark" levels something totally new or do they appear in the description of also ordinary phase transitions? What is the precise role of symmetries and symmetry changes in TGD description and is this consistent with standard description. Here the notion of field body is highly suggestive: the dynamics of field body could induce the dynamics of ordinary matter also in phase transitions.
   
   

There is a long list of questions related to various aspects of TGD based description of phase transitions.

1. In TGD framework NMP a applying to single system replaces second law applying to ensemble as fundamental description. Second law follows from the randomness of the state function reduction for ordinary matter and in long length and time scales from the ultimate occurrence of state function reductions to opposite boundary of CD in ensemble. How does this affect the description of phase transitions? NMP has non-trivial implications only for dark matter at MB since it NMP does favors preservation and even generation of negentropic entanlement (NE). Does NMP imply that MB plays a key role in all phase transitions?
   
   
2. Does strong form of holography of TGD reduce all transitions in some sense to this kind of 2-D quantum critical phase transitions at fundamental level? Note that partonic 2-surfaces can be seen as carriers of effective magnetic charges and string world sheets carrying spinor modes accompany magnetic flux tubes. Could underlying conformal gauge symmetry and its change have practical implications for the description of all phase transitions, even 3-D and thermodynamical phase transitions?
   
   
3. Could many-sheetedness of space-time - in particular the associated p-adic length scale hierarchy - be important and could one identify the space-time sheets whose dynamics controls the transition? Could the fundamental description in terms of quantum phase transitions relying on strong form of holography apply to all phase transitions? Could dark phases at MB be the key to the description of also ordinary thermodynamical phase transitions? Could one see dark MB as master and ordinary matter as slave and redue the description of all phase transitions to dark matter level.
   

   Could the change of h_eff for dark matter at field body accompany any phase transition - even thermodynamical - or only quantum critical phase transition at some level in the hierarchy of space-time sheets? Or are also phase transitions involving no change of h_eff possible? Do ordinary phase transitions correspond to these. What is the role of h_eff changing "transitons" and their dynamical symmetries?
   
   

4. The huge vacuum degeneracy of Kähler action implies that any space-time surface with CP₂ projection that is Lagrangian manifold and has therefore dimension not larger than two, is vacuum extremal. The small deformations of these vacuum extremals define preferred extremals. One expects that this vacuum degeneracy implies infinite number of ground states as in the case of spin glass (magnetized system consisting of regions with different direction of magnetization). One can speak of 4-D spin glass. It would seem that the hierarchy of Planck constants labelling different quantum phases and the phase transitions between these phases can be interpreted in terms of 4-D spin glass property? Besides phases one would have also phase transitions having "transitons" as building bricks.
   

   It seems that one cannot assign 4-D spin glass dynamics to MB. If magnetic flux tubes are carriers of monopole flux, they cannot be small local deformations of vacuum extremals for which Kähler form vanishes. Hence 4-D spin glass property can be assigned to flux tubes carrying vanishing magnetic flux. Early cosmology suggests that cosmic strings as infinitely flux tubes having 2-D CP₂ projection and carrying monopole flux are deformed to magnetic flux tubes and suffer topological condensation around vacuum extremals and deform them during the TGD counterpart of inflationary period.
   

   Comment: Glass state looks like a transition rather than state and ZEO and 4-D spin glass description would seem to fit naturally to his situation: glass would be a 4-D variant of spin glass. The time scale of transition is long and one might think that h_eff at the space-time sheet "controlling" transition is rather large and also the change of h_eff is large.
   
   

Symmetries and phase transitions

The notion of symmetry is considerably more complex in TGD framework than in standard picture based on positive energy ontology. There are dynamical symmetries of dark matter states located at the boundaries of CD. For space-time sheets describing phase transitions there are also dynamical symmetries but they are different. In standard physics one has just states and their symmetries. Conformal gauge symmetries forming a hierarchy: conformal field theories this symmetry is maximal and the hierarchy is absent.

1. There is importance and very delicate difference between thermal and thermodynamical symmetries. Thermal symmetries are due to thermal equilibrium implying symmetries in statistical sense. Quantal symmetries correspond to representations of symmetry group and are possible if thermal fluctuations do not transform the states of the representations the states of other representation.
   

   Dark dynamical symmetries are quantum symmetries. The breaking of thermal translational symmetry of liquid leads to discrete translational symmetry of crystal having interpretation as quantum symmetry. The generation of continuous thermal translational symmetry from discrete quantum symmetry means loss of quantum symmetry. To my opinion, standard thinking is sloppy here.
   
   

2. For thermodynamical phase transitions temperature reduction induces spontaneous breaking of symmetry: consider only liquid-to-crystal transition. Analogously, in gauge theories the reduction gauge coupling strength leads to spontaneous symmetry breaking: quantum fluctuations combine representation of sub-group to a representation of larger group. It would seem that spontaneous symmetry breaking actually brings in a symmetry and the ubroken symmetry is "thermal" or pure gauge symmetry. QCD serves as an example: as strong coupling strength (analogous to temperature) becomes large confinement occurs and color symmetry becomes pure gauge symmetry.
   
   
3. In TGD the new feature is that there are two kinds of symmetries for dark conformal hierarchies. Symmetries are either pure gauge symmetries or genuine dynamical symmetries affecting the dark state at field body physically. As h_eff increases, the conformal pure gauge symmetry is reduced (the conformal gauge algebra annilating the states becomes smaller) but dynamical symmetry associated with the degrees of freedom above measurement resolution increases. In ordinary conformal theories pure gauge conformal symmetry is always maximal so that this phenomenon does not occur.
   

   The intuitive picture is that the increase of dynamical symmetry induced by the reduction of pure gauge conformal symmetry occurs as temperature is lowered and quantum coherence in longer scales becomes possible. This conforms with the thermodynamical and gauge theory views if pure gauge symmetry is identified as counterpart of symmetry as it is understood in thermodynamics and gauge theories.
   

   The dynamical symmetry of dark matter however increases. This symmetry is something new and would be genuine quantum symmetry in the sense that quantum fluctuations respect the representations of this group. The increase of h_eff indeed implies reduction of Kähler coupling strength analogous to reduction of temperature so that these quantum symmetries can emerge.
   
   

4. There is also a dynamical symmetry associated with phase transitions h_eff(f)=m× h_eff(i) such that m would define the rank of ADE Lie group G classifying states of "transitons". Lie groups with ranks n_i and n_f would be ranks for the Lie group G in the initial and final states. G would correspond to either gauge (not pure gauge) or Kac-Moody symmetry as also for corresponding dynamical symmetry groups associated with phases.
   
   
5. An interesting question relates to Kosterlitz-Thouless Thouless phase transition, which is 2-D and for which symmetry is not changed. Could one interpret it as a phase transition changing h_eff for MB: symmetry group as abstract group would not change although the scale in which acts would change: this is like taking zoom. The dynamical symmetry group assignable to dark matter at flux tubes would however change but remain hidden.
   
   

To sum up, the notion of magnetic (field) body might apply even to the ordinary phase transitions. Dark symmetries - also discrete translational and rotational symmetries - would be assigned with dark MB possibly present also in ordinary phases. The dynamical symmetries of MB would bring a new element to the description. Ordinary phase transitions would be induced by those of MB. This would generalize the vision that MB controls biological body central for TGD view about living matter. In the spirit of slaving hierarchy and TGD inspired vision about quantum biology, ordinary matter would be slave and MB the master and the description of the phase transitions in terms of dynamics of master could be much more simpler than the standard description. This would be a little bit like understanding technical instrument from the knowledge of its function and from control level rather than from the mere physical structure.

For backbround see the article What's new in TGD inspired view about phase transitions? or the chapter Criticality and dark matter of "Hyper-finite Factors and Dark Matter Hierarchy".

For a summary of earlier postings see Links to the latest progress in TGD.