Re: [Phys-L] Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in Unexpected Places: A Looped Double Catenary & A Block/Plank Balanced on a Cylinder (very long)

[David Bowman <David_Bowman@georgetowncollege.edu>]

As an addendum to my last post:

> I've worked that out.  The 'order parameter' critical exponent has a classical mean-field value of 1/2.

All these mundane examples of symmetry breaking involve one or, at most, a few degrees of freedom.  Under such circumstances I think any 2nd order phase transition they may display will, of necessity, have classical mean-field critical exponents.  I think in order for the critical exponents to be non-classical I think one needs to have an infinite number of interacting degrees of freedom cooperating to produce the phase transition (such as is the case in typical statistical mechanical and quantum field-theoretic situations).

David Bowman