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Surface-induced disorder and aperiodic perturbations at first-order transitions

L. Turban·F. Igloi
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Abstract

In systems displaying a bulk first-order transition the order parameter may vanish continuously at a free surface, a phenomenon which is called surface-induced disorder. In the presence of surface-induced disorder the correlation lengths, parallel and perpendicular to the surface, diverge at the bulk transition point. In this way the surface induces an anisotropic power-law singular behavior for some bulk quantities. For example in a finite system of transverse linear size L, the response functions diverge as L^{(d-1)z+1}, where d is the dimension of the system and z is the anisotropy exponent. We present a general scaling picture for this anisotropic discontinuity fixed point. Our phenomenological results are confronted with analytical and numerical calculations on the 2D q-state Potts model in the large-q limit. The scaling results are demonstrated to apply also for the same model with a layered, Fibonacci-type modulation of the couplings for which the anisotropy exponent is a continuous function of the strength of the quasiperiodic perturbation.

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L. Turban, F. Igloi. 2002-07-01. Surface-induced disorder and aperiodic perturbations at first-order transitions. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.66.014440

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