Thermodynamics of the HMF model with a magnetic field

Abstract: We study the thermodynamics of the Hamiltonian Mean Field (HMF) model with an external potential playing the role of a "magnetic field". If we consider only fully stable states, this system does not present any phase transition. However, if we take into account metastable states (for a restricted class of perturbations), we find a very rich phenomenology. In particular, the system displays a region of negative specific heats in the microcanonical ensemble in which the temperature decreases as the energy increases. This leads to ensembles inequivalence and to zeroth order phase transitions similar to the "gravothermal catastrophe" and to the "isothermal collapse" of self-gravitating systems. In the present case, they correspond to the reorganization of the system from an "anti-aligned" phase (magnetization pointing in the direction opposite to the magnetic field) to an "aligned" phase (magnetization pointing in the same direction as the magnetic field). We also find that the magnetic susceptibility can be negative in the microcanonical ensemble so that the magnetization decreases as the magnetic field increases. The magnetic curves can take various shapes depending on the values of energy or temperature. We describe hysteretic cycles involving positive or negative susceptibilities. We also show that this model exhibits gaps in the magnetization at fixed energy, resulting in ergodicity breaking.