Order-disorder criticality, wetting, and morphological phase transitions in the irreversible growth of far-from-equilibrium magnetic films

Abstract

An exhaustive numerical investigation of the growth of magnetic films in confined $(d+1)$-dimensional stripped geometries ($d=1,2$) is carried out by means of extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Thin films in contact with a thermal bath are grown by adding spins with two possible orientations and considering ferromagnetic (nearest-neighbor) interactions. At low temperatures, it is observed that the films exhibit ``spontaneous magnetization reversals'' during the growth process. Furthermore, it is found that for $d=1$ the system is non-critical, while a continuous order-disorder phase transition at finite temperature takes place in the $d=2$ case. Using standard finite-size scaling procedures, the critical temperature and some relevant critical exponents are determined. Finally, the growth of magnetic films in $(2+1)$ dimensions with competing short-range magnetic fields acting along the confinement walls is studied. Due to the antisymmetric condition considered, an interface between domains with spins having opposite orientation develops along the growing direction. Such an interface undergoes a localization-delocalization transition that is the precursor of a wetting transition in the thermodynamic limit. Furthermore, the growing interface also undergoes morphological transitions in the growth mode. A comparison between the well-studied equilibrium Ising model and the studied irreversible magnetic growth model is performed throughout. Although valuable analogies are encountered, it is found that the nonequilibrium nature of the latter introduces new and rich physical features of interest.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figure