Edge fluctuations and third-order phase transition in harmonically confined long-range systems

Abstract

We study the distribution of the position of the rightmost particle $x_{\max}$ in a $N$-particle Riesz gas in one dimension confined in a harmonic trap. The particles interact via long-range repulsive potential, of the form $r^{-k}$ with $-2 -2$. We also find that these large deviation functions describe a pulled to pushed type phase transition as observed in Dyson's log-gas ($k\to 0$) and $1d$ one component plasma ($k=-1$). Remarkably, we find that the phase transition remains $3^{\rm rd}$ order for the entire regime. Our results demonstrate the striking universality of the $3^{\rm rd}$ order transition even in models that fall outside the paradigm of Coulomb systems and the random matrix theory. We numerically verify our analytical expressions of the large deviation functions via Monte Carlo simulation using an importance sampling algorithm.