Perturbative Computation of Thermal Characteristics of the Stoner Phase Transition

Abstract

We apply the thermal (imaginary time) perturbative expansion to the relevant effective field theory to compute characteristics of the phase transition to the ordered state which can occur at low temperatures in the gas of (nonrelativistic) spin 1/2 fermions interacting through a short-range spin independent repulsive binary interaction potential. We show how to obtain a systematic expansion of the system's free energy depending on the densities $n_+$ and $n_-$ of spin-up and spin-down fermions. In this paper we truncate this expansion at the second order and determine, by numerically minimizing the free energy, the equilibrium proportions of $n_+$ and $n_-$ (that is, the system's polarization) as functions of the temperature, the system's overall density $n = n_+ + n_-$ and the strength of the interaction.