1992/06/18 by Randall D. Kamien, David R. Nelson
Chemistry · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions #Material Dynamics and Properties #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/bf01048086
published as J. Stat. Phys. 71 (1993) 23 · 23 pages (requires harvmac), figures upon request
arxiv created 1992/06/18 · openalex publication_date 1993/04/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The statistical mechanics of directed line-like objects, such as directed polymers in an external field, strands of dipoles in both ferro- and electrorheological fluids, and flux lines in high-T\tiny C superconductors bears a close resemblance to the quantum mechanics of bosons in 2+1 dimensions. We show that single component and binary mixture critical phenomena in these systems are in the universality class of three dimensional uniaxial dipolar ferromagnets and ferroelectrics. Our results also apply to films of two superfluid species undergoing phase separation well below their λ-points near T=0. In the case of directed polymers and electrorheological fluids we analyze the effects of free ends occurring in the sample as well as a novel directionally-dependent compressibility.