2011/02/07 by Kai Zhang, Patrick Charbonneau · 1 citation
Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Artificial intelligence #Block Copolymer Self-Assembly #Computer science #Condensed matter physics #Coulomb #Electron #Ising model #Mathematics #Monte Carlo method #Physics #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Statistical physics #Statistics #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech #k-nearest neighbors algorithm
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.83.214303
15 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables
arxiv created 2011/02/07 · openalex publication_date 2011/06/09 · arxiv updated 2015/03/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The equilibrium phase behavior of microphase-forming systems is notoriously difficult to obtain because of the extended metastability of their modulated phases. In this paper we present a systematic simulation methodology for studying layered microphases and apply the approach to two prototypical lattice-based systems: the three-dimensional axial next-nearest-neighbor Ising (ANNNI) and Ising-Coulomb (IC) models. The method involves thermodynamically integrating along a reversible path established between a reference system of free spins under an ordering field and the system of interest. The resulting free-energy calculations unambiguously locate the phase boundaries. Simple phases are not found to play a particularly significant role in the devil's flowers and interfacial roughening plays at most a small role in the ANNNI layered regime. With the help of generalized order parameters, the paramagnetic-modulated critical transition of the ANNNI model is also studied. We confirm the XY universality of the paramagnetic-modulated transition and its isotropic nature.