3,312 research outputs found
Critical behavior of an Ising model with aperiodic interactions
We write exact renormalization-group recursion relations for a ferromagnetic
Ising model on the diamond hierarchical lattice with an aperiodic distribution
of exchange interactions according to a class of generalized two-letter
Fibonacci sequences. For small geometric fluctuations, the critical behavior is
unchanged with respect to the uniform case. For large fluctuations, the uniform
fixed point in the parameter space becomes fully unstable. We analyze some
limiting cases, and propose a heuristic criterion to check the relevance of the
fluctuations.Comment: latex file, 5 figures, accepted by Braz. Jour. Phy
A thermodynamical fiber bundle model for the fracture of disordered materials
We investigate a disordered version of a thermodynamic fiber bundle model
proposed by Selinger, Wang, Gelbart, and Ben-Shaul a few years ago. For simple
forms of disorder, the model is analytically tractable and displays some new
features. At either constant stress or constant strain, there is a non
monotonic increase of the fraction of broken fibers as a function of
temperature. Moreover, the same values of some macroscopic quantities as stress
and strain may correspond to different microscopic cofigurations, which can be
essential for determining the thermal activation time of the fracture. We argue
that different microscopic states may be characterized by an experimentally
accessible analog of the Edwards-Anderson parameter. At zero temperature, we
recover the behavior of the irreversible fiber bundle model.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure
Phase diagram of a model for a binary mixture of nematic molecules on a Bethe lattice
We investigate the phase diagram of a discrete version of the Maier-Saupe
model with the inclusion of additional degrees of freedom to mimic a
distribution of rodlike and disklike molecules. Solutions of this problem on a
Bethe lattice come from the analysis of the fixed points of a set of nonlinear
recursion relations. Besides the fixed points associated with isotropic and
uniaxial nematic structures, there is also a fixed point associated with a
biaxial nematic structure. Due to the existence of large overlaps of the
stability regions, we resorted to a scheme to calculate the free energy of
these structures deep in the interior of a large Cayley tree. Both
thermodynamic and dynamic-stability analyses rule out the presence of a biaxial
phase, in qualitative agreement with previous mean-field results
Field behavior of an Ising model with aperiodic interactions
We derive exact renormalization-group recursion relations for an Ising model,
in the presence of external fields, with ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor
interactions on Migdal-Kadanoff hierarchical lattices. We consider layered
distributions of aperiodic exchange interactions, according to a class of
two-letter substitutional sequences. For irrelevant geometric fluctuations, the
recursion relations in parameter space display a nontrivial uniform fixed point
of hyperbolic character that governs the universal critical behavior. For
relevant fluctuations, in agreement with previous work, this fixed point
becomes fully unstable, and there appears a two-cycle attractor associated with
a new critical universality class.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure (included). Accepted for publication in Int. J.
Mod. Phys.
Compressible Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin-glass model
We introduce a Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin-glass model with the addition of
elastic degrees of freedom. The problem is formulated in terms of an effective
four-spin Hamiltonian in the pressure ensemble, which can be treated by the
replica method. In the replica-symmetric approximation, we analyze the
pressure-temperature phase diagram, and obtain expressions for the critical
boundaries between the disordered and the ordered (spin-glass and
ferromagnetic) phases. The second-order para-ferromagnetic border ends at a
tricritical point, beyond which the transition becomes discontinuous. We use
these results to make contact with the temperature-concentration phase diagrams
of mixtures of hydrogen-bonded crystals.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures; added references, added conten
Critical properties of an aperiodic model for interacting polymers
We investigate the effects of aperiodic interactions on the critical behavior
of an interacting two-polymer model on hierarchical lattices (equivalent to the
Migadal-Kadanoff approximation for the model on Bravais lattices), via
renormalization-group and tranfer-matrix calculations. The exact
renormalization-group recursion relations always present a symmetric fixed
point, associated with the critical behavior of the underlying uniform model.
If the aperiodic interactions, defined by s ubstitution rules, lead to relevant
geometric fluctuations, this fixed point becomes fully unstable, giving rise to
novel attractors of different nature. We present an explicit example in which
this new attractor is a two-cycle, with critical indices different from the
uniform model. In case of the four-letter Rudin-Shapiro substitution rule, we
find a surprising closed curve whose points are attractors of period two,
associated with a marginal operator. Nevertheless, a scaling analysis indicates
that this attractor may lead to a new critical universality class. In order to
provide an independent confirmation of the scaling results, we turn to a direct
thermodynamic calculation of the specific-heat exponent. The thermodynamic free
energy is obtained from a transfer matrix formalism, which had been previously
introduced for spin systems, and is now extended to the two-polymer model with
aperiodic interactions.Comment: 19 pages, 6 eps figures, to appear in J. Phys A: Math. Ge
Statistical models of mixtures with a biaxial nematic phase
We consider a simple Maier-Saupe statistical model with the inclusion of
disorder degrees of freedom to mimic the phase diagram of a mixture of rod-like
and disc-like molecules. A quenched distribution of shapes leads to the
existence of a stable biaxial nematic phase, in qualitative agreement with
experimental findings for some ternary lyotropic liquid mixtures. An annealed
distribution, however, which is more adequate to liquid mixtures, precludes the
stability of this biaxial phase. We then use a two-temperature formalism, and
assume a separation of relaxation times, to show that a partial degree of
annealing is already sufficient to stabilize a biaxial nematic structure.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure
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