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How to understand the negative specific heat of a massless Majorana fermion in one dimension?

Physics Asked by Smart Yao on February 1, 2021

Let us consider a massless Majorana fermion on a ring of length $L$ with a periodic boundary condition at a temperature $T$.
Then the conformal field theory calculation tells us that the quantum partition function of this single Majorana is ($k_text{B}equiv1$)
begin{eqnarray}
Z(T,L)=chi_{1/16}(tau)chi^*_{1/16}(tau)|_{tau=i/(LT)},
end{eqnarray}

where $chi_{h}(tau)$ is the Virasoro character of the primary field with conformal dimension $h$.
Then when the system size is large $LTgg1$, the asymptotic behavior of the partition function is
begin{eqnarray}
Z(T,L)&approx&expleft{frac{pi LT}{6}[c-12(h+bar{h})]right},
end{eqnarray}

where $h=bar{h}=1/16$ namely the lowest value of the Virasoro generators $L_0$ and $bar{L}_0$ of the massless Majorana with a central charge $c=1/2$.

Therefore, we can obtain the specific heat per unit length as
begin{eqnarray}
c_v&=&frac{1}{L}Tfrac{partial^2}{partial T^2}[Tln(Z(T,L))]
&=&frac{pi T}{3}(c-12h-12bar{h})
&=&-frac{pi T}{3}
&<&0text{ (when $T>0$)}.
end{eqnarray}

My question is how to understand this negative specific heat and does it mean that Majorana fermion is thermally unstable at all at any finite temperature?

One Answer

The free energy per unit lenth of a chiral $c=1$ Dirac fermion, or a non-chiral $c=1/2$ massless Majorana is $$ beta F/L = -int_{-infty}^{infty} frac{dk}{2pi} ln(1+ e^{-beta v_f hbar |k|}) = - frac{1}{pi beta v_fhbar }sum_{n=1}^infty(-1)^{n+1}frac 1{n^2} = - frac {pi }{12 }frac1 {beta v_fhbar } nonumber $$

For general central charge $c$ we have
$$ F/L= -frac{pi c}{6beta^2 v_F hbar} $$ this is negative, but the internal energy is $$ langle Erangle/L=frac{partial}{partial beta}(beta F/L)= +frac{pi c}{6beta^2 v_F hbar}=frac{pi}{12beta^2 v_F hbar}= frac{pi k_B^2 T^2}{12 v_F hbar}. $$ The specific heat is then $$ (1/L)frac{partial langle Erangle}{partial T}=frac{pi c k_B^2 T}{3v_F hbar}=frac{pi k_B^2 T}{6v_F hbar} $$ This is positive and depends only on $c$ as it should. I don't know where you get the weight $h$ bits from. I think there are additional factors to be included in expression for the thermodynamic partition function in terms of the the Virasoro characters, but it's too long since I worked on this stuff, and my copy of Di Francisco in in my inaccessible office.

Answered by mike stone on February 1, 2021

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