2008/08/23 by Jorge Anderson Paiva Ramos, J. A. P. Ramos, E. Granato +6 · 2 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Material Dynamics and Properties #Solidification and crystal growth phenomena #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.78.031109
published as Phys. Rev. E 78, 031109 (2008) · 8 pages, 9 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. E
arxiv created 2008/08/23 · openalex publication_date 2008/09/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the influence of thermal fluctuations in the phase diagram of a recently introduced two-dimensional phase field crystal model with an external pinning potential. The model provides a continuum description of pinned lattice systems allowing for both elastic deformations and topological defects. We introduce a nonconserved version of the model and determine the ground-state phase diagram as a function of lattice mismatch and strength of the pinning potential. Monte Carlo simulations are used to determine the phase diagram as a function of temperature near commensurate phases. The results show a rich phase diagram with commensurate, incommensurate, and liquidlike phases with a topology strongly dependent on the type of ordered structure. A finite-size scaling analysis of the melting transition for the c(2x2) commensurate phase shows that the thermal correlation length exponent nu and specific heat behavior are consistent with the Ising universality class as expected from analytical arguments.