Emerging criticality in the disordered three-color Ashkin-Teller model

Author(s)

Zhu, Qiong ; Wan, Xin ; Narayanan, Rajesh ; Hoyos, Jose A. ; Vojta, Thomas

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: Physical Review B; v. 91, n. 22, p. 16-pg., 2015-06-08.

Abstract

We study the effects of quenched disorder on the first-order phase transition in the two-dimensional three-color Ashkin-Teller model by means of large-scaleMonte Carlo simulations. We demonstrate that the first-order phase transition is rounded by the disorder and turns into a continuous one. Using a careful finite-size-scaling analysis, we provide strong evidence for the emerging critical behavior of the disordered Ashkin-Teller model to be in the clean two-dimensional Ising universality class, accompanied by universal logarithmic corrections. This agrees with perturbative renormalization-group predictions by Cardy. As a byproduct, we also provide support for the strong-universality scenario for the critical behavior of the two-dimensional disordered Ising model. We discuss consequences of our results for the classification of disordered phase transitions as well as generalizations to other systems. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/09850-7 - Disorder, Dynamics, Frustration and Topology in Quantum Condensed Matter
• Grantee: José Abel Hoyos Neto
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Meeting - Abroad