Apparent first-order wetting and anomalous scaling in the two-dimensional Ising model

Abstract

The global phase diagram of wetting in the two-dimensional (2d) Ising model is obtained through exact calculation of the surface excess free energy. Besides a surface field for inducing wetting, a surface-coupling enhancement is included. The wetting transition is critical (second order) for any finite ratio of surface coupling J_s to bulk coupling J, and turns first order in the limit J_s/J to infinity. However, for J_s/J much larger than 1 the critical region is exponentially small and practically invisible to numerical studies. A distinct pre-asymptotic regime exists in which the transition displays first-order character. Surprisingly, in this regime the surface susceptibility and surface specific heat develop a divergence and show anomalous scaling with an exponent equal to 3/2.

This new version presents the exact solution and its properties whereas the older version was based on an approximate numerical study of the model

References in corpus (1)

• Efficient algortihms for the two dimensional Ising model with a surface field

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Heterogeneous Nucleation of a Droplet Pinned at a Chemically Inhomogeneous Substrate: A Simulation Study of the Two-dimensional Ising Case
• Crossover scaling of apparent first-order wetting in two dimensional systems with short-ranged forces
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• Entropic magnetic interlayer coupling