Thermal buckling transition of crystalline membranes in a field

Pierre Le Doussal; Leo Radzihovsky

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.127.015702

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arXiv · 2102.08970

Thermal buckling transition of crystalline membranes in a field

Pierre Le Doussal·Leo Radzihovsky

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Abstract

Two dimensional crystalline membranes in isotropic embedding space exhibit a flat phase with anomalous elasticity, relevant e.g., for graphene. Here we study their thermal fluctuations in the absence of exact rotational invariance in the embedding space. An example is provided by a membrane in an orientational field, tuned to a critical buckling point by application of in-plane stresses. Through a detailed analysis, we show that the transition is in a new universality class. The self-consistent screening method predicts a second order transition, with modified anomalous elasticity exponents at criticality, while the RG suggests a weakly first order transition.

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Pierre Le Doussal, Leo Radzihovsky. 2021-06-21. Thermal buckling transition of crystalline membranes in a field. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.127.015702

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