Weak Singularities of the Isothermal Entropy Change as the Smoking Gun Evidence of Phase Transitions of Mixed-Spin Ising Model on a Decorated Square Lattice in Transverse Field

The magnetocaloric response of the mixed spin-1/2 and spin-S (S>1/2) Ising model on a decorated square lattice is thoroughly examined in presence of the transverse magnetic field within the generalized decoration-iteration transformation, which provides an exact mapping relation with an effective spin-1/2 Ising model on a square lattice in a zero magnetic field. Temperature dependencies of the entropy and isothermal entropy change exhibit an outstanding singular behavior in a close neighborhood of temperature-driven continuous phase transitions, which can be additionally tuned by the applied transverse magnetic field. While temperature variations of the entropy display in proximity of the critical temperature Tc a striking energy-type singularity (T−Tc)log|T−Tc|, two analogous weak singularities can be encountered in the temperature dependence of the isothermal entropy change. The basic magnetocaloric measurement of the isothermal entropy change may accordingly afford the smoking gun evidence of continuous phase transitions. It is shown that the investigated model predominantly displays the conventional magnetocaloric effect with exception of a small range of moderate temperatures, which contrarily promotes the inverse magnetocaloric effect. It turns out that the temperature range inherent to the inverse magnetocaloric effect is gradually suppressed upon increasing of the spin magnitude S.

Log orthogonal functions: approximation properties and applications

We present two new classes of orthogonal functions, log orthogonal functions and generalized log orthogonal functions, which are constructed by applying a $\log $ mapping to Laguerre polynomials. We develop basic approximation theory for these new orthogonal functions, and apply them to solve several typical fractional differential equations whose solutions exhibit weak singularities. Our error analysis and numerical results show that our methods based on the new orthogonal functions are particularly suitable for functions that have weak singularities at one endpoint and can lead to exponential convergence rate, as opposed to low algebraic rates if usual orthogonal polynomials are used.