A Note on Holography and Phase Transitions

Focusing on the connection between the Landau theory of second order phase transitions and the holographic approach to critical phenomena, we study diverse field theories in an anti-de Sitter black hole background. Through simple analytical approximations, solutions to the equations of motion can be obtained in closed form which give rather good approximations of the results obtained using more involved numerical methods. The agreement we find stems from rather elementary considerations on perturbation of Schr\"odinger equations.