Phase Transitions

Abstract

The question regarding the reasons and the mechanisms of the phase transitions is one of the oldest problems of physics. Since the commencement of the study of natural philosophy, scientists have been thinking about why the four different elements fire, water, earth, air do exist and under which conditions these manifestations of matter can convert into each other. We have dealt with the theory of phase transitions, which is still highly topical and represents an important region of application of Statistical Physics, in Vol. 5 of this basic course in Theoretical Physics, as far as it was possible to do within the framework of the classical phenomenological Thermodynamics. In Sect. 4.1, we will gather once more in a very short and compact form the most important results and concepts, and we will formulate some amendments which will be important for the following, in order to then look in Sect. 4.2 more closely to the critical phenomena, which are observed in connection with the so-called second-order phase transition.