Thermodynamic assessment of the Pb-Sr system

The Pb-Sr system has been critically reviewed and modeled by means of the CALPHAD (CALculation of PHAse Diagrams) approach. It contains seven stoichiometric compounds, i.e. SrPb3, Sr3Pb5, Sr2Pb3, SrPb, Sr5Pb4, Sr5Pb3 and Sr2Pb, in which the SrPb3 and Sr2Pb phases melt congruently, and the other five phases form via peritectic reactions. The enthalpies of formation for the intermetallic compounds at 0 K are provided by first-principles calculations. The liquid, fcc and bcc phases are modeled as substitutional solution phases. Both Redlich-Kister and exponential polynomials are used to describe the excess Gibbs energy of the liquid. Two sets of self-consistent thermodynamic parameters are obtained by considering reliable experimental data and the computed enthalpies of formation. Comprehensive comparisons between the calculated and measured phase diagram and thermodynamic data show that the experimental information is satisfactorily accounted for by the present thermodynamic description.

A MEAN FIELD APPROACH TO THE COLORED HUBBARD MODEL

By subdividing a 2d square lattice into plaquettes containing 4 lattice sites each, the Hubbard Hamiltonian is reformulated in terms of different "colored" fermion species. This makes it possible to describe e.g. antiferromagnetic order or d-wave superconductivity in terms of expectation values of composite scalar fields. A suitable mean field approximation indeed reproduces qualitatively the measured phase diagram and shows a competition between phases with antiferromagnetic ordering and dx2-y2-superconductivity at low temperatures.