Phase transitions proton ordering

The commonly accepted pulsar model is a neutron star of about one solar mass and a radius of the order of ten kilometers. A neutron star consists of a crust, which is about 1 km thick, and a high-density core. In the crust free neutrons and electrons coexist with a lattice of nuclei. The star s core consists mainly of neutrons and a few percents of protons and electrons. The central part of the core may contain some exotic states of matter, such as quark matter or a pion condensate. Inner parts of a neutron star cool up to temperatures 108iT in a few days after the star is formed. These temperatures are less than the critical temperatures Tc for the superfluid phase transitions of neutrons and protons. Thus, the neutrons in the star s crust and the core from a superfluid, while the protons in the core form a superconductor. The rotation of a neutron superfluid is achieved by means of an array of quantized vortices, each carrying a quantum of vorticity... 

Contribution of pairing fluctuations to the specific heat in the hadron shell is minor for the case of the neutron pairing due to a small value of Tc < IMeV compared to the value of the neutron chemical potential f//, > 50 MeV). Therefore in the neutron channel fluctuations of the gap are relevant only in a very narrow vicinity of the critical point. However this effect might be not so small for protons, for which the chemical potential is of the order of several MeV, whereas the gap is of the order of one MeV. Therefore it seems that fluctuations may smear the phase transition in a rather broad vicinity of the critical point of the proton superconductivity. 

Figure 2 shows the schematic structure in the paraelectric (T > Tn) and an-tiferroelectric (T < Tn) phases, hi the paraelectric phase the time-averaged position of the H atoms hes in the middle of an O - H...0 bond, whereas in the antiferroelectric phase, the protons locahze close to one or the other O atom. Prior to the recent NMR work [20-25], the largely accepted model of the phase transition was that the phase transition involved only the ordering of the H atoms in the O - H...0 bonds, and no changes in the electronic structure of the C4 moieties were considered to take place. The NMR results show that, in addition to the order/disorder motion of the H atoms, the transition also involves a change in the electronic charge distribution and symmetry of the C4 squares. 

Static dielectric measurements [8] show that all crystals in the family exhibit a very large quantum effect of isotope replacement H D on the critical temperature. This effect can be exemphfied by the fact that Tc = 122 K in KDP and Tc = 229 K in KD2PO4 or DKDP. KDP exhibits a weak first-order phase transition, whereas the first-order character of phase transition in DKDP is more pronounced. The effect of isotope replacement is also observed for the saturated (near T = 0 K) spontaneous polarization, Pg, which has the value Ps = 5.0 xC cm in KDP and Ps = 6.2 xC cm in DKDP. As can be expected for a ferroelectric phase transition, a decrease in the temperature toward Tc in the PE phase causes a critical increase in longitudinal dielectric constant (along the c-axis) in KDP and DKDP. This increase follows the Curie-Weiss law. Sc = C/(T - Ti), and an isotope effect is observed not only for the Curie-Weiss temperature, Ti Tc, but also for the Curie constant C (C = 3000 K in KDP and C = 4000 K in DKDP). Isotope effects on the quantities Tc, P, and C were successfully explained within the proton-tunneling model as a consequence of different tunneling frequencies of H and D atoms. However, this model can hardly reproduce the Curie-Weiss law for Sc-... 

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