{"id":8730,"date":"2019-05-22T16:10:53","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/phase_transition_-or_shift\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T16:10:53","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:10:53","slug":"phase_transition_-or_shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/phase_transition_-or_shift\/","title":{"rendered":"Phase transition (or shift)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Any change that takes place in the phase of one quantity or in the relative phase. &nbsp;If the change is characterized by an abrupt jump in the value of the order parameter, then it is a first-order transition. &nbsp;If the change evolves smoothly to or from a zero value, it is a continuous phase transition (e.g., the onset of ferromagnetism when iron is cooled below the Curie temperature of 1043K). &nbsp;When the change is not only abrupt, but also accompanied by events such as fluctuations and breakdowns in correlations between dimensions of an order parameter, then it constitutes a second-order transition. If accompanied by other events (e.g., hysteresis), this can be evidence for a discontinuous (non-equilibrium) phase transition that involves non-linear qualitative change in the dynamics of the order parameter.&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ccs.fau.edu\/~kelso\/\" data-editable-link=\"http:\/\/www.ccs.fau.edu\/~kelso\/?target=_self\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">J.A.Scott Kelso<\/a>&nbsp; among others, has demonstrated the existence of such transitions in changes in human movement coordination (viz., a sudden shift from anti-phase to in-phase at the order parameter level, when the movement frequency that is the control parameter attains a critical value).&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"bifurcation\">Bifurcation<\/a>, <a href=\"catastrophe_theory\">Catastrophe theory<\/a>, <a href=\"control_parameter\">Control parameter<\/a>, <a href=\"hysteresis\">Hysteresis<\/a>, <a href=\"order_parameter\">Order parameter<\/a>, <a href=\"quantitative_and_qualitative_change\">Quantitative and qualitative change<\/a>, <a href=\"phase\">Phase<\/a>, <a href=\"synergetics\">Synergetics<\/a>, <a href=\"transition\">Transition<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any change that takes place in the phase of one quantity or in the relative phase. &nbsp;If the change is characterized by an abrupt jump in the value of the order parameter, then it is a first-order transition. &nbsp;If the change evolves smoothly to or from a zero value, it is a continuous phase transition &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/phase_transition_-or_shift\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Phase transition (or shift)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-8730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}