Ordered droplets in quantum magnets with long-range interactions

A defect coupling to the square of the order parameter in a nearly quantum-critical magnet can nucleate an ordered droplet while the bulk system is in the paramagnetic phase. We study the influence of long-range spatial interactions of the form $r^{-(d+\sigma)}$ on the droplet formation. To this end, we solve a Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson free energy in saddle point approximation. The long-range interaction causes the droplet to develop an energetically unfavorable power-law tail. However, for $\sigma>0$, the free energy contribution of this tail is subleading in the limit of large droplets; and the droplet formation is controlled by the defect bulk. Thus, for large defects, long-range interactions do not hinder the formation of droplets.Comment: 2 pages, 3 eps figures, final version as publishe

Magnetic Grueneisen ratio of the random transverse-field Ising chain

The magnetic analog of the Gr\"{u}neisen parameter, i.e., the magnetocaloric effect, is a valuable tool for studying field-tuned quantum phase transitions. We determine the magnetic Gr\"{u}neisen parameter of the one-dimensional random transverse-field Ising model, focusing on its low-temperature behavior at the exotic infinite-randomness quantum critical point and in the associated quantum Griffiths phases. We present extensive numerical simulations showing that the magnetic Gr\"{u}neisen parameter diverges logarithmically with decreasing temperature in the quantum Griffiths phase. It changes sign right at criticality. These results confirm a recent strong-disorder renormalization group theory. We also compare our findings to the behavior of the clean transverse-field Ising chain.Comment: 5 pages, 6 eps figures, submitted to Proc. of QCNP0

Inter-layer Josephson coupling in stripe-ordered superconducting cuprates

Motivated by experiments on LBCO-1/8 which suggest that stripe order co-exists with two-dimensional pairing without inter-layer phase coherence over an extended range of temperatures, we determine the inter-layer Josephson coupling in the presence of stripe order. We employ a mean-field description of bond-centered stripes, with a zero-momentum superconducting condensate and alternating stripe directions pinned by the low-temperature tetragonal (LTT) lattice structure. We show that the Fermi-surface reconstruction arising from strong stripe order can suppress the Josephson coupling between adjacent layers by more than an order of magnitude.Comment: 4 pages, 4 fig

Spin excitations in fluctuating stripe phases of doped cuprate superconductors

Using a phenomenological lattice model of coupled spin and charge modes, we determine the spin susceptibility in the presence of fluctuating stripe charge order. We assume the charge fluctuations to be slow compared to those of the spins, and combine Monte Carlo simulations for the charge order parameter with exact diagonalization of the spin sector. Our calculations unify the spin dynamics of both static and fluctuating stripe phases and support the notion of a universal spin excitation spectrum in doped cuprate superconductors.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figs, minor changes, final version as publishe

On the Nochka-Chen-Ru-Wong Proof of Cartan's Conjecture

In 1982-83, E. Nochka proved a conjecture of Cartan on defects of holomorphic curves in $\Bbb P^n$ relative to a possibly degenerate set of hyperplanes. This was further explained by W. Chen in his 1987 thesis, and subseqently simplified by M. Ru and P.-M. Wong in 1991. The proof involved assigning weights to the hyperplanes. This paper provides a mild simplification of the proof of the construction of the weights, by construing the ``Nochka diagram'' of Ru and Wong as a convex hull.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. Reorganized to reflect the submitted version; added a reference to a paper of Nochk

Anomalous elasticity in a disordered layered XY model

We investigate the effects of layered quenched disorder on the behavior of planar magnets, superfluids, and superconductors by performing large-scale Monte-Carlo simulations of a three-dimensional randomly layered XY model. Our data provide numerical evidence for the recently predicted anomalously elastic (sliding) intermediate phase between the conventional high-temperature and low-temperature phases. In this intermediate phase, the spin-wave stiffness perpendicular to the layers vanishes in the thermodynamic limit while the stiffness parallel to the layers as well as the spontaneous magnetization are nonzero. In addition, the susceptibility displays unconventional finite-size scaling properties. We compare our Monte-Carlo results with the theoretical predictions, and we discuss possible experiments in ultracold atomic gases, layered superconductors and in nanostructures.Comment: 6 pages, 4 eps figures included, proceedings of FQMT11, final version as publishe

Smearing of the phase transition in Ising systems with planar defects

We show that phase transitions in Ising systems with planar defects, i.e., disorder perfectly correlated in two dimensions are destroyed by smearing. This is caused by effects similar to but stronger than the Griffiths phenomena: Exponentially rare spatial regions can develop true static long-range order even when the bulk system is still in its disordered phase. Close to the smeared transition, the order parameter is very inhomogeneous in space, with the thermodynamic (average) order parameter depending exponentially on temperature. We determine the behavior using extremal statistics, and we illustrate the results by computer simulations.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, to appear in J. Phys.