We determine the interface tension for the 100, 110 and 111 interface of the simple cubic Ising model with nearest-neighbour interaction using novel simulation methods. To overcome the droplet/strip transition and the droplet nucleation barrier we use a newly developed combination of the multimagnetic algorithm with the parallel tempering method. We investigate a large range of inverse temperatures to study the anisotropy of the interface tension in detail.
Using Monte Carlo simulations we show that the autocorrelation function $C(t)$ in the d=3 Ising model with a plaquette interaction has a stretched-exponential decay in a supercooled liquid phase. Such a decay characterizes also some ground-state probability distributions obtained from the numerically exact counting of up to 10^450 configurations. A related model with a strongly degenerate ground state but lacking glassy features does not exhibit such a decay. Althoug the stretched exponential decay of C(t) in the three-dimensional supercooled liquid is inconsistent with the droplet model, its …
In this study, we have employed the classical transfer matrix technique to investigate the magnetization plateaus, phase diagrams and other thermodynamical properties of the one-dimensional antiferromagnetic spin-3/2 and spin-2 Ising chains with single-ion anisotropy in the presence of an external magnetic field at very low temperature. We have showed that single ion-anisotropy is one of the indispensable ingredients for an energy gap which leads to magnetic plateau mechanism in one-dimensional antiferromagnetic Ising spin chains. Other thermodynamical predictions seem to be provide this argum…
We investigate the phase diagram of a mixed spin-1/2--spin-1 Ising system in the presence of quenched disordered anisotropy. We carry out a mean-field and a standard self-consistent Bethe--Peierls calculation. Depending on the amount of disorder, there appear novel transition lines and multicritical points. Also, we report some connections with a percolation problem and an exact result in one dimension.
The spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg model on the triangulated Kagome (triangles-in-triangles) lattice is exactly solved by establishing a precise mapping correspondence to the simple spin-1/2 Ising model on Kagome lattice. It is shown that the disordered spin liquid state, which otherwise occurs in the ground state of this frustrated spin system on assumption that there is a sufficiently strong antiferromagnetic intra-trimer interaction, is eliminated from the ground state by arbitrary but non-zero Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya anisotropy.
A spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg branched chain constituted by regularly alternating Ising spins and Heisenberg dimers involving an additional side branching is exactly solved in a magnetic field by the transfer-matrix method. The spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg branched chain involves two different Ising and one Heisenberg coupling constants. The overall ground-state phase diagram is formed by three different ground states emergent depending on a mutual interplay between the magnetic field and three considered coupling constants: the modulated quantum antiferromagnetic phase, the quantum ferrimagnetic p…
We reanalyze transfer matrix and Monte Carlo results for the critical Binder cumulant U* of an anisotropic two-dimensional Ising model on a square lattice in a square geometry with periodic boundary conditions. Spins are coupled between nearest neighboring sites and between next-nearest neighboring sites along one of the lattice diagonals. We find that U* depends only on the asymptotic critical long-distance features of the anisotropy, irrespective of its realization through ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic next-nearest neighbor couplings. We modify an earlier renormalization-group calculati…
The mixed spin-1/2 and spin-1 Ising model on the Bethe lattice with both uniaxial as well as biaxial single-ion anisotropy terms is exactly solved by combining star-triangle and triangle-star mapping transformations with exact recursion relations. Magnetic properties (magnetization, phase diagrams and compensation phenomenon) are investigated in detail. The particular attention is focused on the effect of uniaxial and biaxial single-ion anisotropies that basically influence the magnetic behavior of the spin-1 atoms.
Effect of uniaxial single-ion anisotropy upon magnetic properties of a mixed spin-1/2 and spin-S (S>=1) Ising model on a bathroom tile (4-8) lattice is examined within the framework of an exact star-triangle mapping transformation. The particular attention is focused on the phase diagrams established for several values of the quantum spin number S. It is shown that the mixed-spin bathroom tile lattice exhibits very similar phase boundaries as the mixed-spin honeycomb lattice whose critical points are merely slightly enhanced with respect to the former ones. The influence of uniaxial single-ion…
The generalized Fisher super-exchange antiferromagnetic model with uniaxial crystal-field anisotropy is exactly investigated using an extended mapping technique. An exact relation between partition function of the studied system and that one of the standard zero-field spin-1/2 Ising model on the corresponding lattice is obtained applying the decoration-iteration transformation. Consequently, exact results for all physical quantities are derived for arbitrary spin values S of decorating atoms. Particular attention is paid to the investigation of the effect of crystal-field anisotropy and extern…
We consider a S=1 kagomé Ising model with triquadratic interactions around each triangular face of the kagomé lattice, single-ion anisotropy and an applied magnetic field. A mapping establishes an equivalence between the magnetic canonical partition function of the model and the grand canonical partition function of a kagomé lattice-gas model with localized three-particle interactions. Since exact phase diagrams are known for condensation in the one-parameter lattice-gas model, the mapping directly provides the corresponding exact phase diagrams of the three-parameter S=1 Ising model. As aniso…
Universality classes of Ising-like phase transitions are investigated in series of two-dimensional synchronously updated probabilistic cellular automata (PCAs), whose time evolution rules are either of Glauber type or of majority-vote type, and degrees of anisotropy are varied. Although early works showed that coupled map lattices and PCAs with synchronously updating rules belong to a universality class distinct from the Ising class, careful calculations reveal that synchronous Glauber PCAs should be categorized into the Ising class, regardless of the degree of anisotropy. Majority-vote PCAs f…
The surface tension of rough interfaces between coexisting phases in 2D and 3D Ising models are discussed in view of the known results and some original calculations presented in this paper. The results are summarised in a formula, which allows to interpolate the corrections to finite-size scaling between two and three dimensions. The physical meaning of an analytic continuation to noninteger values of the spatial dimensionality d is discussed. Lattices and interfaces with properly defined fractal dimensions should fulfil certain requirements to possibly have properties of an analytic continua…
For the 3D gonihedric Ising models defined by Savvidy and Wegner the bare string tension is zero and the energy of a spin interface depends only on the number of bends and self-intersections, in antithesis to the standard nearest-neighbour 3D Ising action. When the parameter kappa weighting the self-intersections is small the model has a first order transition and when it is larger the transition is continuous. In this paper we investigate the scaling of the renormalized string tension, which is entirely generated by fluctuations, using Monte Carlo simulations This allows us to obtain an estim…
A spin-1 transverse Ising model with longitudinal crystal field in a longitudinal magnetic field is examined by introducing an effective field approximation (IEFT) which includes the correlations between different spins that emerge when expanding the identities. The effects of the crystal field as well as the transverse and longitudinal magnetic fields on the thermal and magnetic properties of the spin system are discussed in detail. The order parameters, Helmholtz free energy and entropy curves are calculated numerically as functions of the temperature and Hamiltonian parameters. A number of …
The phase diagram of the spin-1 Ising model in the presence of a biaxial crystal-field anisotropy is studied within the framework of a variational approach, based on the Bogolyubov inequality for the free energy. We have investigated the effects of a transverse crystal-field $D_{y}$ on the phase diagram in the $T-D_{x}$ plane. Results obtained by using effective-field theory (EFT) on the honeycomb (% $z=3$), square ($z=4$) and simple cubic ($z=6$) lattices ($z$ is the coordination number) show only continuous phase transitions, while the variational approach presents first-order and continuous…
Effects of a single-ion anisotropy on magnetocaloric properties of selected spin-$s\geq 1$ antiferromagnetic Ising clusters with frustration-inducing triangular geometry are studied by exact enumeration. It is found that inclusion of the single-ion anisotropy parameter $D$ can result in a much more complex ground-state behavior, which is also reflected in a magnetocaloric effect (MCE) at finite temperatures. For negative $D$ (easy-plane anisotropy) with increasing $s$ the ground-state magnetization as a function of the external field gradually shows increasing number of plateaus of various hei…
Two one-dimensional spin-1 antiferromagnetic Ising models with a single-ion anisotropy under external magnetic field at low temperatures are exactly investigated by the transfer-matrix technique. The magnetization per spin ($m$) is obtained for the two types of models (denoted by model 1 and 2) as an explicit function of the magnetic field ($H$%) and of the anisotropy parameter ($D$). Model 1 is an extension of the recently one treated by Ohanyan and Ananikian [\emph{Phys. Lett. A} \textbf{% 307} (2003) 76]: we have generalized their model to the spin-1 case and a single-ion anisotropy term ha…
The roughening phase diagram of the d=3 Ising model with uniaxially anisotropic interactions is calculated for the entire range of anisotropy, from decoupled planes to the isotropic model to the solid-on-solid model, using hard-spin mean-field theory. The phase diagram contains the line of ordering phase transitions and, at lower temperatures, the line of roughening phase transitions, where the interface between ordered domains roughens. Upon increasing the anisotropy, roughening transition temperatures settle after the isotropic case, whereas the ordering transition temperature increases to i…
Two-dimensional layered aperiodic Ising systems are studied in the extreme anisotropic limit where they correspond to quantum Ising chains in a transverse field. The modulation of the couplings follows an aperiodic sequence generated through substitution. According to Luck's criterion, such a perturbation becomes marginal when the wandering exponent of the sequence vanishes. Three marginal sequences are considered: the period-doubling, paper-folding and three-folding sequences. They correspond to bulk perturbations for which the critical temperature is shifted. The surface magnetization is obt…
We study the surface tension and the phenomenon of phase coexistence for the Ising model on $\mathbbm{Z}^d$ ($d \geqslant 2$) with ferromagnetic but random couplings. We prove the convergence in probability (with respect to random couplings) of surface tension and analyze its large deviations : upper deviations occur at volume order while lower deviations occur at surface order. We study the asymptotics of surface tension at low temperatures and relate the quenched value $τ^q$ of surface tension to maximal flows (first passage times if $d = 2$). For a broad class of distributions of the coupli…
This investigation employs a square lattice and Glauber dynamics methodology to probe the effects of diluteness in the crystal-field interaction in a Blume-Capel Ising system under an oscillating magnetic-field. Fourteen different phase diagrams have been observed in temperature-magnetic-field space as the concentration of the crystal-field interactions is varied. Besides, a comparison is given with the results of the pure spin-1 Ising systems.
As a generic example for crystals where the crystal-fluid interface tension depends on the orientation of the interface relative to the crystal lattice axes, the nearest neighbor Ising model on the simple cubic lattice is studied over a wide temperature range, both above and below the roughening transition temperature. Using a thin film geometry $L_x \times L_y \times L_z$ with periodic boundary conditions along the z-axis and two free $L_x \times L_y$ surfaces at which opposing surface fields $\pm H_{1}$ act, under conditions of partial wetting, a single planar interface inclined under a cont…
We employ Monte Carlo simulations in order to investigate critical behavior of a geometrically frustrated spin-1 Ising antiferromagnet on a triangular lattice in the presence of a single-ion anisotropy. It has been previously found that long-range order can exist in the isotropic system with a spin larger than some critical value estimated as 11/2. We show that the presence of the single-ion anisotropy can lead to a partial long-range order in the low-temperature region even below this critical value, namely for the spin 1, within a certain range of the anisotropy strength. At higher temperatu…
Ground-state and finite-temperature properties of a special class of exactly solvable Ising-Heisenberg planar models are examined using the generalized decoration-iteration and star-triangle mapping transformations. The investigated spin systems exhibit an interesting quantum behaviour manifested in a remarkable geometric spin frustration, which appears notwithstanding the purely ferromagnetic interactions of the considered model systems. This kind of spin frustration originates from an easy-plane anisotropy in the XXZ Heisenberg interaction between nearest-neighbouring spins that favours ferr…
In this communication we show that the surface tension of the real fluids of the Lennard-Jones type can be obtained from the surface tension of the lattice gas (Ising model) on the basis of the global isomorphism approach developed earlier for the bulk properties.
We have studied the presence of plateaus on the low-temperature magnetization of an antiferromagnetic spin-1 chain, as an external uniform magnetic field is varied. A crystal-field interaction is present in the model and the exchange constants follow a random quenched (Bernoulli or Gaussian) distribution. Using a transfer-matrix technique we calculate the largest Lyapunov exponent and, from it, the magnetization at low temperatures as a function of the magnetic field, for different values of the crystal-field and of the width of the distributions. For the Bernoulli distribution, the number of …
In liquid mixtures and other binary systems at low temperatures the pure phases may coexist, separated by an interface. The interface tension vanishes according to $σ= σ_0 (1 - T/T_c)^μ$ as the temperature T approaches the critical point from below. Similarly the correlation length diverges as $ξ= f_- (1 - T/T_c)^{-ν}$ in the low temperature region. For three-dimensional systems the dimensionless product $R_- = σ_0 f_-^2$ is universal. We calculate its value in the framework of field theory in d=3 dimensions by means of a saddle-point expansion around the kink solution including two-loop corre…
The mixed spin-(1/2, S_B, S_C) Ising model on a decorated square lattice with two different kinds of decorating spins S_B and S_C placed on its horizontal and vertical bonds, respectively, is exactly solved by establishing a precise mapping relationship with the corresponding spin-1/2 Ising model on an anisotropic square (rectangular) lattice. The effect of uniaxial single-ion anisotropy acting on both types of decorating spins S_B and S_C is examined in particular. If decorating spins S_B and S_C are integer and half-odd-integer, respectively, or if the reverse is the case, the model under in…
The mixed spin-1/2 and spin-S Ising model on the Union Jack (centered square) lattice with four different three-spin (triplet) interactions and the uniaxial single-ion anisotropy is exactly solved by establishing a rigorous mapping equivalence with the corresponding zero-field (symmetric) eight-vertex model on a dual square lattice. A rigorous proof of the aforementioned exact mapping equivalence is provided by two independent approaches exploiting either a graph-theoretical or spin representation of the zero-field eight-vertex model. An influence of the interaction anisotropy as well as the u…
We study the (analytic) finite-size corrections in the Ising model on the strip with fixed ($+ -$) boundary conditions. We find that subdominant finite-size corrections to scaling should be to the form $a_k/N^{2k-1}$ for the free energy $f_N$ and $b_k^{(n)}/N^{2k-1}$ for inverse correlation length $ξ_n^{-1}$, with integer value of $k$. We investigate the set $\{a_k, b_k^{(n)}\}$ by exact evaluation and their changes upon varying anisotropy of coupling. We find that the amplitude ratios $b_k^{(n)}/a_k$ remain constant upon varying coupling anisotropy. Such universal behavior are correctly repro…
Using Monte Carlo simulations we study the dynamics of three-dimensional Ising models with nearest-, next-nearest-, and four-spin (plaquette) interactions. During coarsening, such models develop growing energy barriers, which leads to very slow dynamics at low temperature. As already reported, the model with only the plaquette interaction exhibits some of the features characteristic of ordinary glasses: strong metastability of the supercooled liquid, a weak increase of the characteristic length under cooling, stretched-exponential relaxation and aging. The addition of two-spin interactions, in…
The finite-size scaling functions for anisotropic three-dimensional Ising models of size $L_1 \times L_1 \times aL_1$ ($a$: anisotropy parameter) are studied by Monte Carlo simulations. We study the $a$ dependence of finite-size scaling functions of the Binder parameter $g$ and the magnetization distribution function $p(m)$. We have shown that the finite-size scaling functions for $p(m)$ at the critical temperature change from a two-peak structure to a single-peak one by increasing or decreasing $a$ from 1. We also study the finite-size scaling near the critical temperature of the layered squa…
Deterministic coarse-grained descriptions of driven diffusive systems (DDS) have been hampered by apparent inconsistencies with kinetic Ising models of DDS. In the evolution towards the driven steady-state, ``triangular'' anisotropies in the two systems point in opposite directions with respect to the drive field. We show that this is non-universal behavior in the sense that the triangular anisotropy ``flips'' with local modifications of the Ising interactions. The sign and magnitude of the triangular anisotropy also vary with temperature. We have also flipped the anisotropy of coarse-grained …
An exactly solvable variant of mixed spin-(1/2,1) Ising-Heisenberg diamond chain is considered. Vertical spin-1 dimers are taken as quantum ones with Heisenberg bilinear and biquadratic interactions and with single-ion anisotropy, while all interactions between spin-1 and spin-1/2 residing on the intermediate sites are taken in the Ising form. The detailed analysis of the $T=0$ ground state phase diagram is presented. The phase diagrams have shown to be rather rich, demonstrating large variety of ground states: saturated one, three ferrimagnetic with magnetization equal to 3/5 and another four…
The mechanisms of thermally activated magnetization switching in small ferromagnetic particles driven by an external magnetic field are investigated. For low uniaxial anisotropy the spins rotate coherently while for sufficiently large uniaxial anisotropy they behave Ising-like, i.e. the switching then is due to nucleation. The crossover from coherent rotation to nucleation is studied for the classical three-dimensional Heisenberg model with uniaxial anisotropy by Monte Carlo simulations. From the temperature dependence of the metastable lifetime the energy barrier of a switching process can be…
Excess contributions to the free energy due to interfaces occur for many problems encountered in the statistical physics of condensed matter when coexistence between different phases is possible (e.g. wetting phenomena, nucleation, crystal growth, etc.). This article reviews two methods to estimate both interfacial free energies and line tensions by Monte Carlo simulations of simple models, (e.g. the Ising model, a symmetrical binary Lennard-Jones fluid exhibiting a miscibility gap, and a simple Lennard-Jones fluid). One method is based on thermodynamic integration. This method is useful to st…
We study phase transitions in the two-dimensional Heisenberg model with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, the Ising anisotropy ($η$), and the dipolar interaction under zero and finite magnetic fields ($H$). For three typical strengths (zero, weak, and strong) of the dipolar interaction, we present the $H$-$η$ phase diagrams by estimating order parameters for skyrmion-lattice and helical phases and in-plane magnetization by using a Monte Carlo method with an $O(N)$ algorithm. We find in the phase diagrams three types of skyrmion-lattice phases, i.e., two square lattices and a triangular la…
The N-vector cubic model relevant, among others, to the physics of the randomly dilute Ising model is analyzed in arbitrary dimension by means of an exact renormalization-group equation. This study provides a unified picture of its critical physics between two and four dimensions. We give the critical exponents for the three-dimensional randomly dilute Ising model which are in good agreement with experimental and numerical data. The relevance of the cubic anisotropy in the O(N) model is also treated.
We investigate the thermally activated magnetization switching of small ferromagnetic particles driven by an external magnetic field. For low uniaxial anisotropy the spins can be expected to rotate coherently, while for sufficient large anisotropy they should behave Ising-like, i.e., the switching should then be due to nucleation. We study this crossover from coherent rotation to nucleation for the classical three-dimensional Heisenberg model with a finite anisotropy. The crossover is influenced by the size of the particle, the strength of the driving magnetic field, and the anisotropy. We dis…
We focus on the Gibbs free energy $ΔG$ for nucleating a droplet of the stable phase (e.g. solid) inside the metastable parent phase (e.g. liquid), close to the first-order transition temperature. This quantity is central to the theory of homogeneous nucleation, since it superintends the nucleation rate. We recently introduced a field theory describing the dependence of $ΔG$ on the droplet volume $V$, taking into account besides the microscopic fuzziness of the droplet-parent interface, also small fluctuations around the spherical shape whose effect, assuming isotropy, was found to be a charact…
We show how the spontaneous bulk, surface and corner magnetizations in the square lattice Ising model can all be obtained within one approach. The method is based on functional equations which follow from the properties of corner transfer matrices and vertex operators and which can be derived graphically. In all cases, exact analytical expressions for general anisotropy are obtained. Known results, including several for which only numerical computation was previously possible, are verified and new results related to general anisotropy and corner angles are obtained.
The criticality of the (2+1)-dimensional S=1 transverse-field Ising model is investigated with the numerical diagonalization method. The scaling behavior is improved by tuning the coupling-constant parameters; the S=1 spin model allows us to incorporate a variety of interactions such as the single-ion anisotropy and the biquadratic interactions. Simulating the clusters with N=6,8,...,20 spins, we estimate the critical indices as 1/ν=1.586(6) and η=0.034(4).
Interface free energy is the contribution to the free energy of a system due to the presence of an interface separating two coexisting phases at equilibrium. It is also called surface tension. The content of the paper is 1) the definition of the interface free energy from first principles of statistical mechanics; 2) a detailed exposition of its basic properties. We consider lattice models with short range interactions, like the Ising model. A nice feature of lattice models is that the interface free energy is anisotropic so that some results are pertinent to the case of a crystal in equilibri…
The Ising-like spin ice model, with a macroscopically degenerate ground state, has been shown to be approximated by several real materials. Here we investigate a model related to spin ice, in which the Ising spins are replaced by classical Heisenberg spins. These populate a cubic pyrochlore lattice and are coupled to nearest neighbours by a ferromagnetic exchange term J and to the local <1,1,1> axes by a single-ion anisotropy term D. The near neighbour spin ice model corresponds to the case D/J infinite. For finite D/J we find that the macroscopic degeneracy of spin ice is broken and the groun…
Anisotropy effects on the finite-size critical behavior of a two-dimensional Ising model on a general triangular lattice in an infinite-strip geometry with periodic, antiperiodic, and free boundary conditions (bc) in the finite direction are investigated. Exact results are obtained for the scaling functions of the finite-size contributions to the free energy density. With xi_> the largest and xi_< the smallest bulk correlation length at a given temperature near criticality, we find that the dependence of these functions on the ratio xi_< / xi_> and on the angle parameterizing the orientation o…
The spin-1/2 XXZ Heisenberg magnet is considered for the case of the anisotropy parameter tending to infinity (so-called, Ising limit). A thermal correlation function of the ferromagnetic string is calculated over the ground state. The approach to the calculation of the correlation functions in the limit of infinite anisotropy is based on the observation that the wave function is expressed in terms of the symmetric Schur functions. It is demonstrated that at low temperatures the amplitude of the asymptotical expression of this correlation function is proportional to the squared numbers of stri…
The ensemble-switch method for computing wall excess free energies of condensed matter is extended to estimate the interface free energies between coexisting phases very accurately. By this method, system geometries with linear dimensions $L$ parallel and $L_z$ perpendicular to the interface with various boundary conditions in the canonical or grandcanonical ensemble can be studied. Using two- and three-dimensional Ising models, the nature of the occurring logarithmic finite size corrections is studied. It is found crucial to include interfacial fluctuations due to "domain breathing".
Using tempered Monte Carlo simulations, we study the the spin-glass phase of dense packings of Ising dipoles pointing along random axes. We consider systems of L^3 dipoles (a) placed on the sites of a simple cubic lattice with lattice constant $d$, (b) placed at the center of randomly closed packed spheres of diameter d that occupy a 64% of the volume. For both cases we find an equilibrium spin-glass phase below a temperature T_sg. We compute the spin-glass overlap parameter q and their associated correlation length xi_L. From the variation of xi_L with T and L we determine T_sg for both syste…
We prove the validity of multiparameter universality for the exact critical bulk correlation functions of the anisotropic square-lattice and triangular-lattice Ising models on the basis of the exact scaling structure of the correlation function of the two-dimensional anisotropic scalar $φ^4$ model with four nonuniversal parameters. The correlation functions exhibit a directional nonuniversality due to principal axes whose orientation depends on microscopic details. In particular we determine the exact anisotropy matrices governing the bulk and finite-size critical behavior of the $φ^4$ and Isi…
We study a low temperature anisotropic anti-ferromagnetic 2D Ising model through the guise of a certain dimer model. This model has a bijection with a one-dimensional particle system equipped with creation and annihilation. In the thermodynamic limit, we determine the explicit phase diagrams as functions of temperature and anisotropy. Two values of the anisotropy are of particular interest - the 'critical' value and the 'independent' value. At independence, the particle system has the same distribution as the two colored noisy voter model. Its limiting measure under a natural scaling window is…
We study the critical behavior of a general class of cubic-symmetric spin systems in which disorder preserves the reflection symmetry $s_a\to -s_a$, $s_b\to s_b$ for $b\not= a$. This includes spin models in the presence of random cubic-symmetric anisotropy with probability distribution vanishing outside the lattice axes. Using nonperturbative arguments we show the existence of a stable fixed point corresponding to the random-exchange Ising universality class. The field-theoretical renormalization-group flow is investigated in the framework of a fixed-dimension expansion in powers of appropriat…
We present analytical and numerical evidence for the validity of an effective S=1/2 approach to the description of random field generation in S>=1, and especially in an S=1, dipolar spin glass models with strong uniaxial Ising anisotropy and subject to weak external magnetic field Bx transverse to the Ising direction. Explicitely Bx-dependent random fields are shown to naturally emerge in the effective low-energy description of a microscopic S=1 toy model. We discuss our results in relation to recent theoretical studies pertaining to the topic of Bx-induced random fields in the LiHo$_x$Y$_{1-x…
We use Monte-Carlo simulations to study aging phenomena and the occurence of spinglass phases in systems of single-domain ferromagnetic nanoparticles under the combined influence of dipolar interaction and anisotropy energy, for different combinations of positional and orientational disorder. We find that the magnetic moments oriente themselves preferably parallel to their anisotropy axes and changes of the total magnetization are solely achieved by 180 degree flips of the magnetic moments, as in Ising systems. Since the dipolar interaction favorizes the formation of antiparallel chain-like st…
Hard-spin mean-field theory has recently been applied to Ising magnets, correctly yielding the absence and presence of an interface roughening transition respectively in $d=2$ and $d=3$ dimensions and producing the ordering-roughening phase diagram for isotropic and anisotropic systems. The approach has now been extended to the effects of quenched random pinning centers and missing bonds on the interface of isotropic and anisotropic Ising models in $d=3$. We find that these frozen impurities cause domain boundary roughening that exhibits consecutive thresholding transitions as a function inter…
Membranes containing a wide variety of ternary mixtures of high chain-melting temperature lipids, low chain-melting temperature lipids, and cholesterol undergo lateral phase separartion into coexisting liquid phases at a miscibility transition. When membranes are prepared from a ternary lipid mixture at a critical composition, they pass through a miscibility critical point at the transition temperature. Since the critical temperature is typically on the order of room temperature, membranes provide an unusual opportunity in which to perform a quantitative study of biophysical systems that exhib…
We study the two-dimensional N-component Landau-Ginzburg Hamiltonian with cubic anisotropy. We compute and analyze the fixed-dimension perturbative expansion of the renormalization-group functions to four loops. The relations of these models with N-color Ashkin-Teller models, discrete cubic models, planar model with fourth order anisotropy, and structural phase transition in adsorbed monolayers are discussed. Our results for N=2 (XY model with cubic anisotropy) are compatible with the existence of a line of fixed points joining the Ising and the O(2) fixed points. Along this line the exponent …
