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

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.

10 pages, 7 figures, epsf, RevTeX. Revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev. B. More details given about the quantum Potts model. Minor mistakes corrected

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• Quantum first order phase transitions
• Nonequilibrium phase transition in a driven Potts model with friction
• Percolation in random environment
• Dynamics of a Nonequilibrium Discontinuous Quantum Phase Transition in a Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Surface transitions of the semi-infinite Potts model II: the low bulk temperature regime
• Influence of aperiodic modulations on first-order transitions: numerical study of the two-dimensional Potts model
• Critical behavior at the interface between two systems belonging to different universality classes
• Mean-field calculation of critical parameters and log-periodic characterization of an aperiodic-modulated model