Casimir contribution to the interfacial Hamiltonian for 3D wetting
File(s)PhysRevLett.128.195701.pdf (263.57 KB)
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Author(s)
Squarcini, Alessio
Romero-Enrique, Jose Manuel
Parry, Andrew
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Previous treatments of three-dimensional (3D) short-ranged wetting transitions have missed an entropic or low-temperature Casimir contribution to the binding potential describing the interaction between the unbinding interface and wall. This we determine by exactly deriving the interfacial model for 3D wetting from a more microscopic Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson Hamiltonian. The Casimir term changes the interpretation of fluctuation effects occurring at wetting transitions so that, for example, mean-field predictions are no longer obtained when interfacial fluctuations are ignored. While the Casimir contribution does not alter the surface phase diagram, it significantly increases the adsorption near a first-order wetting transition and changes completely the predicted critical singularities of tricritical wetting, including the nonuniversality occurring in 3D arising from interfacial fluctuations. Using the numerical renormalization group, we show that, for critical wetting, the asymptotic regime is extremely narrow with the growth of the parallel correlation length characterized by an effective exponent in quantitative agreement with Ising model simulations, resolving a long-standing controversy.
Date Issued
2022-05-13
Date Acceptance
2022-04-19
Citation
Physical Review Letters, 2022, 128 (19)
ISSN
0031-9007
Publisher
American Physical Society
Journal / Book Title
Physical Review Letters
Volume
128
Issue
19
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2022. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.
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Subjects
01 Mathematical Sciences
02 Physical Sciences
09 Engineering
General Physics
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 195701
Date Publish Online
2022-05-13