Disorder at first-order classical and quantum phase transitions

Michael Aizenman

Ahmed K. Ibrahim, Thomas Vojta

Pallab Goswami, David Schwab, Sudip Chakravarty

We give a heuristic argument for disorder rounding of a first-order quantum phase transition into a continuous phase transition. From both weak and strong disorder analysis of the N-color quantum Ashkin-Teller model in one spatial dimension, we find that, for N > or =3, the first-order transition is rounded to a continuous transition and the physical picture is the same as the random transverse field Ising model for a limited parameter regime. The results are strikingly different from the corresponding classical problem in two dimensions where the fate of the renormalization group flows is a fixed point corresponding to N-decoupled pure Ising models.

Chetan Kotabage

Rafael L. Greenblatt

This dissertation describes the effect of quenched randomness on first order phase transitions in lattice systems, classical and quantum. It is proven that a large class of quantum lattice systems in low dimension (d <= 2 or, with suitable continuous symmetry, d <= 4) cannot exhibit first-order phase transitions in the presence of suitable ("direct") quenched disorder.

M. A. Contínentino, André S. Ferreira