Abstract
In the previous chapter, some common structures of molecular systems were studied. The number of structures of a system increases as the symmetry of the molecules decreases. Under certain conditions of pressure and temperature, some of these structures may form thermodynamically stable phases (their free energies satisfy the stability conditions analyzed in Chap. 2). When two or more phases are simultaneously stable, the equilibrium phase is the one with the lowest free energy, while the others are metastable phases. When the thermodynamic conditions are modified, the free energies of the different phases change accordingly and in some instances the equilibrium phase becomes metastable with respect to another phase (formerly metastable) which is now the new equilibrium phase. This change of stability is called a phase transition, whose study is the subject of this chapter.
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Further Reading
H.E. Stanley, Introduction to Phase Transitions and Critical Phenomena (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987). A good general introduction to phase transitions.
L.D. Landau, E.M. Lifshitz, Statistical Physics, 3rd edn. (Pergamon Press, London, 1989). Contains the theory of Landau in a more abstract setting.
P.G. de Gennes, J. Prost, The Physics of Liquid Crystals (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993). Discusses the observation of the isotropic–nematic transition.
C. Domb, The Critical Point (Taylor & Francis, London, 1996). Contains a very detailed discussion of the critical point of the van der Waals equation.
M.E. Fisher, Phases and phase diagrams: Gibbs’s legacy today, in The Proceedings of the Gibbs Symposium (Yale University) (American Mathematical Society, 1990), p. 39. Now reprinted in “Excursions in the Land of Statistical Physics”, selected reviews by M.E. Fisher, World Scientific, London (2017). Discusses many of the possible complexities of phase diagrams.
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Baus, M., Tejero, C.F. (2021). Phase Transitions. In: Equilibrium Statistical Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75432-7_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75432-7_9
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