First-order phase transition in a 2D random-field Ising model with conflicting dynamics

Abstract

The effects of locally random magnetic fields are considered in a nonequilibrium Ising model defined on a square lattice with nearest-neighbors interactions. In order to generate the random magnetic fields, we have considered random variables $\{h\}$ that change randomly with time according to a double-gaussian probability distribution, which consists of two single gaussian distributions, centered at $+h_o$ and $-h_o$, with the same width $\sigma$. This distribution is very general, and can recover in appropriate limits the bimodal distribution ($\sigma \to 0$) and the single gaussian one ($ho=0$). We performed Monte Carlo simulations in lattices with linear sizes in the range $L=32-512$. The system exhibits ferromagnetic and paramagnetic steady states. Our results suggest the occurence of first-order phase transitions between the above-mentioned phases at low temperatures and large random-field intensities $h_o$, for some small values of the width $\sigma$. By means of finite size scaling, we estimate the critical exponents in the low-field region, where we have continuous phase transitions. In addition, we show a sketch of the phase diagram of the model for some values of $\sigma$.

13 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in JSTAT

References in corpus (6)

• Absence of an Almeida-Thouless line in Three-Dimensional Spin Glasses
• Behavior of Ising Spin Glasses in a Magnetic Field
• Destruction of first-order phase transition in a random-field Ising model
• Scaling Analysis of Domain-Wall Free-Energy in the Edwards-Anderson Ising Spin Glass in a Magnetic Field
• On the nature of the phase transition in the three-dimensional random field Ising model
• Ising spin glass under continuous-distribution random magnetic fields: Tricritical points and instability lines