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arXiv:1207.1080 · Physical Review Letters

Bond Disorder Induced Criticality of the Three-Color Ashkin-Teller Model

Arash Bellafard, Helmut G. Katzgraber, Matthias Troyer, Sudip Chakravarty

Published Oct 9, 2012• 17 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

An intriguing result of statistical mechanics is that a first-order phase transition can be rounded by disorder coupled to energylike variables. In fact, even more intriguing is that the rounding may manifest itself as a critical point, quantum or classical. In general, it is not known, however, what universality classes, if any, such criticalities belong to. In order to shed light on this question we examine in detail the disordered three-color Ashkin-Teller model by Monte Carlo methods. Extensive analyses indicate that the critical exponents define a new universality class. We show that the rounding of the first-order transition of the pure model due to the impurities is manifested as criticality. However, the magnetization critical exponent, β, and the correlation length critical exponent, ν, are found to vary with disorder and the four-spin coupling strength, and we conclusively rule out that the model belongs to the universality class of the two-dimensional Ising model.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.109.155701

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An intriguing result of statistical mechanics is that a first-order phase transition can be rounded by disorder coupled to energylike variables. In fact, even more intriguing is that the rounding may manifest itself as a critical point, quantum or classical. In general, it is not known, however, what universality classes, if any, such criticalities belong to. In order to shed light on this question we examine in detail the disordered three-color Ashkin-Teller model by Monte Carlo methods. Extensive analyses indicate that the critical exponents define a new universality class. We show that the rounding of the first-order transition of the pure model due to the impurities is manifested as criticality. However, the magnetization critical exponent, β, and the correlation length critical exponent, ν, are found to vary with disorder and the four-spin coupling strength, and we conclusively rule out that the model belongs to the universality class of the two-dimensional Ising model.
Disorder is an inevitable part of any condensed matter system and therefore its study has always been of great importance. The effect of quenched randomness on a system that exhibits a continuous phase transition in the absence of any impurity has been studied in the past and the results are relatively well understood. However, the effect of quenched randomness on \\emph{first-order} phase transitions is still not well understood. In this dissertation, we study the effect of quenched bond-randomness on the classical and quantum first-order phase transitions.In Chapter 2, we study the effect of the disordered three-color Ashkin-Teller model, whose pure version undergoes a first-order phase transition. We show that the rounding of the first-order transition of the pure model due to the impurities is manifested as a critical point. We conclusively rule out that the model belongs to the universality class of the two-dimensional Ising model. Furthermore, we find that the exponents beta\\betabeta and nu\\nunu vary with disorder and the four-spin coupling strength.In Chapter 3, we extend our study of the disordered three-color Ashkin-Teller model. Utilizing extensive cluster Monte Carlo simulations on large lattice sizes of up to 128times128128 \\times 128128times128 spins, each of which is represented by three colors taking values pm1\\pm 1pm1, we show that the rounding of the first-order phase transition is an emergent criticality.We find that the critical exponents, nu\\nunu and beta\\betabeta, change as the strength of disorder or the four-spin coupling varies, and we show that the correlation length critical exponent violates the lower bound 2/Dlenu2/D \\le \\nu2/Dlenu, where DDD is the dimension of the system.In Chapter 4, we study the \\emph{quantum} three-color Ashkin--Teller model and show that the quantum critical point in (1+1)(1+1)(1+1) dimension is an unusual one, with activated scaling at the critical point and Griffiths-McCoy phase away from it. We find that the behavior is similar to the transverse random field Ising model, even though the pure system has a first-order transition in this case.
We study the effects of quenched disorder on the first-order phase transition in the two-dimensional three-color Ashkin-Teller model by means of large-scale Monte Carlo simulations. We demonstrate that the first-order phase transition is rounded by the disorder and turns into a continuous one. Using a careful finite-size-scaling analysis, we provide strong evidence for the emerging critical behavior of the disordered Ashkin-Teller model to be in the clean two-dimensional Ising universality class, accompanied by universal logarithmic corrections. This agrees with perturbative renormalization-group predictions by Cardy. As a byproduct, we also provide support for the strong-universality scenario for the critical behavior of the two-dimensional disordered Ising model. We discuss consequences of our results for the classification of disordered phase transitions as well as generalizations to other systems.
We investigate the zero-temperature quantum phase transitions of the disordered three-color quantum Ashkin-Teller spin chain by means of large-scale Monte Carlo simulations. We find that the first-order phase transitions of the clean system are rounded by the quenched disorder. For weak intercolor coupling, the resulting emergent quantum critical point between the paramagnetic phase and the magnetically ordered Baxter phase is of infinite-randomness type and belongs to the universality class of the random transverse-field Ising model, as predicted by recent strong-disorder renormalization group calculations. We also find evidence for unconventional critical behavior in the case of strong intercolor coupling, even though an unequivocal determination of the universality class is beyond our numerical capabilities. We compare our results to earlier simulations, and we discuss implications for the classification of phase transitions in the presence of disorder.
First-order phase transitions, classical or quantum, subject to randomness coupled to energylike variables (bond randomness) can be rounded, resulting in continuous transitions (emergent criticality). We study perhaps the simplest such model, the quantum three-color Ashkin-Teller model, and show that the quantum critical point in (1+1)(1+1)(1+1) dimension is an unusual one, with activated scaling at the critical point and Griffiths-McCoy phase away from it. The behavior is similar to the transverse random field Ising model, even though the pure system has a first-order transition in this case. We believe that this fact must be attended to when discussing quantum critical points in numerous physical systems.
The critical behavior of a bond-disordered Ashkin-Teller model on a square lattice is investigated by intensive Monte Carlo simulations. A duality transformation is used to locate a critical plane of the disordered model. This critical plane corresponds to the line of critical points of the pure model, along which critical exponents vary continuously. Along this line the scaling exponent corresponding to randomness \ensuremath{\varphi}=(\ensuremath{\alpha}/\ensuremath{\nu}) varies continuously and is positive so that the randomness is relevant, and different critical behavior is expected for the disordered model. We use a cluster algorithm for the Monte Carlo simulations based on the Wolff embedding idea, and perform a finite size scaling study of several critical models, extrapolating between the critical bond-disordered Ising and bond-disordered four-state Potts models. The critical behavior of the disordered model is compared with the critical behavior of an anisotropic Ashkin-Teller model, which is used as a reference pure model. We find no essential change in the order parameters' critical exponents with respect to those of the pure model. The divergence of the specific heat C is changed dramatically. Our results favor a logarithmic type divergence at Tc{\mathit{T}}_{\mathit{c}}Tc​, C\ensuremath{\sim}lnL for the random-bond Ashkin-Teller and four-state Potts models and C\ensuremath{\sim}ln lnL for the random-bond Ising model.
We study the critical behavior of the 2D N-color Ashkin-Teller model in the presence of random bond disorder whose correlations decays with the distance r as a power-law r -a .We consider the case when the spins of different colors sitting at the same site are coupled by the same bond and map this problem onto the 2D system of N/2 flavors of interacting Dirac fermions in the presence of correlated disorder.Using renormalization group we show that for N = 2, a "weakly universal" scaling behavior at the continuous transition becomes universal with new critical exponents.For N > 2, the first-order phase transition is rounded by the correlated disorder and turns into a continuous one.