Damage propagation at the interface’s localization-delocalization transition of the confined Ising Model

M. LETICIA RUBIO PUZZO; EZEQUIEL V. ALBANO

PHYSICAL REVIEW B - CONDENSED MATTER AND MATERIALS PHYSICS

APS Journal

Año: 2002 vol. 66 p. 1044091 - 1044099

0163-1829

The propagation of damage in a confined magnetic Ising film, with short-range competing magnetic fields (h) acting at opposite walls, is studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations. Due to the presence of the fields, the film undergoes a wetting transition at a well-defined critical temperature Tw(h). In fact, the competing fields cause the occurrence of an interface between magnetic domains of different orientations. For T<Tw(h) [T>Tw(h)] such an interface is bound (unbound) to the walls, while right at Tw(h) the interface is essentially located at the center of the film. It is found that the spatiotemporal spreading of the damage becomes considerably enhanced by the presence of the interface, which acts as a ‘‘catalyst’’ of the damage causing an enhancement of the total damaged area. The critical points for damage spreading are evaluated by extrapolation to the thermodynamic limit using a finite-size scaling approach. Furthermore, the wetting transition effectively shifts the location of the damage spreading critical points, as compared with the well-known critical temperature of the order-disorder transition characteristic of the Ising model. Such critical points are found to be placed within the nonwet phase.