Journal of Statistical Physics

Alexander, Kenneth S.; Biskup, Marek; Chayes, Lincoln

doi: 10.1007/s10955-005-3016-2pmid: N/A

Using the formalism of rigorous statistical mechanics, we study the phenomena of phase separation and freezing-point depression upon freezing of solutions. Specifically, we devise an Ising-based model of a solvent--solute system and show that, in the ensemble with a fixed amount of solute, a macroscopic phase separation occurs in an interval of values of the chemical potential of the solvent. The boundaries of the phase separation domain in the phase diagram are characterized and shown to asymptotically agree with the formulas used in heuristic analyses of freezing-point depression. The limit of infinitesimal concentrations is described in a subsequent paper.

Alexander, Kenneth S.; Biskup, Marek; Chayes, Lincoln

doi: 10.1007/s10955-005-3017-1pmid: N/A

We continue our study of colligative properties of solutions initiated in ref. 1. We focus on the situations where, in a system of linear size L, the concentration and the chemical potential scale like c=ξ/L and h=b/L, respectively. We find that there exists a critical value ξt such that no phase separation occurs for ξ≤ξt while, for ξ>ξt, the two phases of the solvent coexist for an interval of values of b. Moreover, phase separation begins abruptly in the sense that a macroscopic fraction of the system suddenly freezes (or melts) forming a crystal (or droplet) of the complementary phase when b reaches a critical value. For certain values of system parameters, under “frozen” boundary conditions, phase separation also ends abruptly in the sense that the equilibrium droplet grows continuously with increasing b and then suddenly jumps in size to subsume the entire system. Our findings indicate that the onset of freezing-point depression is in fact a surface phenomenon.

Lenci, Marco; Rey-Bellet, Luc

doi: 10.1007/s10955-005-3015-3pmid: N/A

We give large deviation upper bounds, and discuss lower bounds, for the Gibbs-KMS state of a system of quantum spins or an interacting Fermi gas on the lattice. We cover general interactions and general observables, both in the high temperature regime and in dimension one.

Loulakis, Michail

doi: 10.1007/s10955-005-3018-0pmid: N/A

We prove the symmetry of the diffusion coefficient that appears in the fluctuation-dissipation theorem for asymmetric simple exclusion processes.

Pulkkinen, Otto; Merikoski, Juha

doi: 10.1007/s10955-005-3011-7pmid: N/A

We analyze the existence and the size of the giant component in the stationary state of a Markovian model for bipartite multigraphs, in which the movement of the edge ends on one set of vertices of the bipartite graph is a zero-range process, the degrees being static on the other set. The analysis is based on approximations by independent variables and on the results of Molloy and Reed for graphs with prescribed degree sequences. The possible types of phase diagrams are identified by studying the behavior below the zero-range condensation point. As a specific example, we consider the so-called Evans interaction. In particular, we examine the values of a critical exponent, describing the growth of the giant component as the value of the dilution parameter controlling the connectivity is increased above the critical threshold. Rigorous analysis spans a large portion of the parameter space of the model exactly at the point of zero-range condensation. These results, supplemented with conjectures supported by Monte Carlo simulations, suggest that the phenomenological Landau theory for percolation on graphs is not broken by the fluctuations.