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Midterm1 Complex Physics 2022

This document describes a midterm exam for a complex physics course. It includes 3 problems about implementing and analyzing the Ising model on different lattice geometries: 1) Implement the Ising model on a 1D closed ring and modified ring with 4 neighbors per site. Plot the order parameter vs temperature and compare the behavior. 2) Explore possible phase transitions by plotting the magnetization vs temperature for different system sizes. Attempt to identify the critical temperature in the thermodynamic limit. 3) (Optional) For the 1D closed ring, support the reasoning about the critical temperature by discussing the introduction of domain walls and the associated free energy change. Consider how this would change if each site had links to

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Yi Dai
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76 views2 pages

Midterm1 Complex Physics 2022

This document describes a midterm exam for a complex physics course. It includes 3 problems about implementing and analyzing the Ising model on different lattice geometries: 1) Implement the Ising model on a 1D closed ring and modified ring with 4 neighbors per site. Plot the order parameter vs temperature and compare the behavior. 2) Explore possible phase transitions by plotting the magnetization vs temperature for different system sizes. Attempt to identify the critical temperature in the thermodynamic limit. 3) (Optional) For the 1D closed ring, support the reasoning about the critical temperature by discussing the introduction of domain walls and the associated free energy change. Consider how this would change if each site had links to

Uploaded by

Yi Dai
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Complex Physics — Midterm Exam 1

Kim Sneppen and Jan O. Haerter


September 14, 2022

Hand-in date: 12 noon, Thursday, Sept 22, 2022


It is allowed to work in groups, but each student must hand in separately (without copying)
and include information about collaborators. A maximum of three students are allowed per
group.
You may use basic programming libraries where meaningful (e.g. general numerical routines),
as long as they do not implement the Ising model for you (everything we use in the exercise
solutions is OK).
For the hand-in, please include your code in a file separate from your report. We will not
grade the quality of your code (only what is written in the report), but you must submit it.
In total, 10 points can be achieved by solving the problems 1 and 2 below (see annotation),
which map directly onto your grade (in percent of the total course grade). The remaining 90
percent can be obtained from a second midterm exam (10 percent) and the oral exam (80
percent). Note: 2 extra credits can optionally be achieved by also solving problem 3.

a
0 i-1 i i+1 N-1

b
0 i-1 i i+1 N-1

Figure 1: (a) Schematic showing the basic lattice. Any given site i has a connection to sites i − 1
and i + 1, modulo the lattice size N . Only three sites i − 1, i, i + 1 are highlighted in the schematic
for presentation clarity. (b) An example where each node has connectivity four, that is, each node
has the links shown in (a) and two additional random links (exemplified here only for one site i,
other random links are not shown for clarity of presentation, but exist for each site).

Ising Model
Consider the two different lattice geometries in Fig. 1a and b. The schematic in Fig. 1a
displays a one-dimensional periodic closed ring consisting of N sites, where each site has two
nearest neighbors. The schematic in Fig. 1b shows a modification of the closed ring, where

1
each of the N sites has two additional links to random sites, so that each site now has four
nearest neighbors. 1
In each of these two cases place an electron of spin- 12 on each site — modeled as our usual
Ising model with si = ±1. Let the energy of any configuration of spins be described by the
familiar ferromagnetic zero-field Ising model (J > 0, h = 0), i.e.
X
H = −J si sj , (1)
⟨ij⟩

where ⟨ij⟩ denotes any bond that exists between sites i and j in the geometries shown.

1. Implement the Ising model for both geometries. Using a Metropolis algorithm, plot
the order parameter ⟨si ⟩ vs. T . How does the order parameter depend on T in each
case? You will need to simulate various values of T and you will need to ensure that
you have simulated for a sufficiently long time. 5pt

2. Explore possible phase transition behavior of each system. In particular, try to assess
if a critical temperature Tc can be found for either of these two cases. Keep in mind
that Tc relates to the behavior in the thermodynamic limit, so, besides choosing a
sufficiently long simulation time, you will need to extrapolate to infinite system size
(i.e., 1/N → 0). Hint: Try plotting the absolute value of average magnetization |m|
vs. T for various N and visually inspect the plots. Optionally, you can even try to
automatize the identification of Tc for each finite system and then plot Tc vs. 1/N , to
obtain a finite-size scaling. Try to interpret your findings w.r.t. the value of Tc in the
thermodynamic limit. 5pt

3. Extra credit: In the case of Fig. 1a, try to support your reasoning about Tc by discussing
the introduction of a domain wall and the associated free energy change. How would
this reasoning change if you modified Fig. 1a so that each sites i has two further links
to i − 2 and i + 2? 2pt

1
Technical note: Achieving exactly two additional links per site can be accomplished numerically,
by allocating two empty ”stumps” for each site and repeatedly picking two stumps from distinct, non-
neighboring, sites from the list of empty stumps and then marking the corresponding stumps as ”used.” This
way, all sites will end up with exactly four distinct neighbors. If you however find it complicated to achieve
this computationally, then please just allow for an average of 2 extra links to be added per site (some sites
will then have more, others less). This alternate approach will not qualitatively change the outcome of the
exercise.

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