CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

We propose a scaling hypothesis for pattern-forming systems in which modulation of the order parameter results from the competition between a short-ranged interaction and a long-ranged interaction decaying with some power α of the inverse distance. With L being a spatial length characterizing the modulated phase, all thermodynamic quantities are predicted to scale like some power of L, LΔ(α,d). The scaling dimensions Δ(α,d) only depend on the dimensionality of the system d and the exponent α. Scaling predictions are in agreement with experiments on ultrathin ferromagnetic films and computational results. Finally, our scaling hypothesis implies that, for some range of values α>d, inverse-symmetry-breaking transitions may appear systematically in the considered class of frustrated systems.