Interface localization near criticality

Abstract

The theory of interface localization in near-critical planar systems at phase coexistence is formulated from first principles. We show that mutual delocalization of two interfaces, amounting to interfacial wetting, occurs when the bulk correlation length crit- ical exponent \u3bd is larger than or equal to 1. Interaction with a boundary or defect line involves an additional scale and a dependence of the localization strength on the distance from criticality. The implications are particularly rich in the boundary case, where de- localization proceeds through different renormalization patterns sharing the feature that the boundary field becomes irrelevant in the delocalized regime. The boundary delocal- ization (wetting) transition is shown to be continuous, with surface specific heat and layer thickness exponents which can take values that we determine