Related papers: Nematic-Isotropic Transition with Quenched Disorde…
We consider disorder-order phase transitions in the three-dimensional version of the scalar noise model (SNM) of flocking. Our results are analogous to those found for the two-dimensional case. For small velocity (v <= 0.1) a continuous,…
The interplay between disorder and compressibility in Ising magnets is studied. Contrary to pure systems in which a weak compressibility drives the transition first order, we find from a renormalization group analysis that it has no effect…
With quenched disorder, we introduce two-dimensional active nematics suspended in an incompressible fluid. We write the coarse-grained hydrodynamic equations of motion for slow variables, viz. density, orientation and flow fields. The…
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…
We present the first detailed numerical study in three dimensions of a first-order phase transition that remains first-order in the presence of quenched disorder (specifically, the ferromagnetic/paramagnetic transition of the site-diluted…
An overview of results of models of coupled quantum rotors is presented. We focus on rotors with dipolar and quadrupolar potentials in two and three dimensions, potentials which correspond to approximate descriptions of real molecules…
We construct a phenomenological Landau-de Gennes theory for hard colloidal rods by performing an order parameter expansion of the chemical-potential dependent grand potential. By fitting the coefficients to known results of Onsager theory,…
We investigate the effect of quenched bond disorder on the two-dimensional three-color Ashkin-Teller model, which undergoes a first-order phase transition in the absence of impurities. This is one of the simplest and striking models in…
A d-wave high temperature cuprate superconductor exhibits a nematic ordering transition at zero temperature. Near the quantum critical point, the coupling between gapless nodal quasiparticles and nematic order parameter fluctuation can…
We numerically study the density of topological defects for a two-dimensional assembly of particles driven over quenched disorder as a function of quench rate through the nonequilibrium phase transition from a plastic disordered flowing…
Nematic twist--bend is the fifth nematic phase recognized in nature. This phase exhibits spiral orientational order, thus it is a chiral structure and it can be stabilized in systems composed of achiral molecules. The microscopic origin of…
By applying effective medium-style calculations to random spring networks, we demonstrate that internal stresses fundamentally alter the nature of the rigidity transition in disordered materials, changing it from continuous to first-order…
The effect of the external field on the weakly-discontinuous first-order phase transition is analyzed in the frame of the Landau theory. The transformation of the free energy expansion as a power series in the order parameter is suggested…
Discontinuous phase transitions occurs to be particularly interesting from a social point of view because of their relationship to social hysteresis and critical mass. In this paper, we show that the replacement of a time-varying (annealed,…
Modeling and simulation studies using a high-order Landau-de Gennes type model for the direct isotropic/smectic-A liquid crystal transition are presented showing the existence of meta-stable nematic pre-ordering under certain conditions, in…
In this paper we describe the rescattering process in optical field ionization through a one-dimensional model, which improves the well-known quasistatic model by adding the smoothed Coulomb potential in its second step. The above-threshold…
We study by extensive Monte Carlo simulations the effect of random bond dilution on the phase transition of the three-dimensional 4-state Potts model which is known to exhibit a strong first-order transition in the pure case. The phase…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit configurations in which the underlying ordering changes markedly on macroscopic length scales. Such structures include topological defects in the nematic phase and tactoids within nematic-isotropic…
We derive renormalization group equations which allow us to treat order parameter fluctuations near quantum phase transitions in cases where an expansion in powers of the order parameter is not possible. As a prototypical application, we…
The hunt for exotic quantum phase transitions described by emergent fractionalized degrees of freedom coupled to gauge fields requires a precise determination of the fixed point structure from the field theoretical side, and an extreme…