A new method to study phase transition in 3D Heisenberg model

It is shown that partial entropy, which is the classical analog of von Neumann entropy in quantum theory, is an effective tool to study the thermodynamic phase transitions in the physical systems. This method captures the intrinsic characters of critical fluctuations and does not need the pre-assumed order parameter. As an example, the finite temperature phase transition in the quantum three-dimensional spin-1/2 Heisenberg model is studied, where the stochastic series expansion quantum Monte Carlo method with operator-loop update is used. It is found that close to the critical temperature, the derivative of partial entropy displays a maximum value and shows finite size scaling behaviors, from which the critical temperature and critical exponents are determined.