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In thermodynamics, a critical point (or critical state) is the end point of a phase equilibrium curve. One example is the liquid–vapor critical point, the end point of the pressure–temperature curve that designates conditions under which a liquid and its vapor can coexist.
Critical variables are defined, for example in thermodynamics, in terms of the values of variables at the critical point. On a PV diagram, the critical point is an inflection point . Thus: [ 1 ]
Critical phenomena, the collective name associated with the physics of critical points Critical point (thermodynamics), the end point of a phase equilibrium curve; Quantum critical point, a special class of continuous phase transition that takes place at absolute zero
Critical point may refer to: Critical phenomena in physics; Critical point (mathematics), in calculus, a point where a function's derivative is either zero or nonexistent; Critical point (set theory), an elementary embedding of a transitive class into another transitive class which is the smallest ordinal which is not mapped to itself
The critical point is described by a conformal field theory. According to the renormalization group theory, the defining property of criticality is that the characteristic length scale of the structure of the physical system, also known as the correlation length ξ, becomes infinite. This can happen along critical lines in phase space.
In thermodynamics, the reduced properties of a fluid are a set of state variables scaled by the fluid's state properties at its critical point. These dimensionless thermodynamic coordinates, taken together with a substance's compressibility factor, provide the basis for the simplest form of the theorem of corresponding states. [1]
According to van der Waals, the theorem of corresponding states (or principle/law of corresponding states) indicates that all fluids, when compared at the same reduced temperature and reduced pressure, have approximately the same compressibility factor and all deviate from ideal gas behavior to about the same degree.
In thermodynamics, a thermodynamic state of a system is its condition at a specific time; that is, fully identified by values of a suitable set of parameters known as state variables, state parameters or thermodynamic variables.