The order of a phase transition is usually determined by the nature of the
symmetry breaking at the phase transition point and the dimension of the model
under consideration. For instance, q-state Potts models in two dimensions
display a second order, continuous transition for q = 2,3,4 and first order for
higher q.
Tamura et al recently introduced Potts models with "invisible" states which
contribute to the entropy but not the internal energy and noted that adding
such invisible states could transmute continuous transitions into first order
transitions. This was observed both in a Bragg-Williams type mean-field
calculation and 2D Monte-Carlo simulations. It was suggested that the invisible
state mechanism for transmuting the order of a transition might play a role
where transition orders inconsistent with the usual scheme had been observed.
In this paper we note that an alternative mean-field approach employing
3-regular random ("thin") graphs also displays this change in the order of the
transition as the number of invisible states is varied, although the number of
states required to effect the transmutation, 17 invisible states when there are
2 visible states, is much higher than in the Bragg-Williams case. The
calculation proceeds by using the equivalence of the Potts model with 2 visible
and r invisible states to the Blume-Emery-Griffiths (BEG) model, so a
by-product is the solution of the BEG model on thin random graphs.Comment: (2) Minor typos corrected, references update
