Corner wetting in a far-from-equilibrium magnetic growth model

MANÍAS, VIRGINIA; CANDIA, JULIÁN; ALBANO, EZEQUIEL V.

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL B - CONDENSED MATTER

EDP Sciences, Societa Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag

Lugar: Les Ulis Cedex A (Francia), Bologna (Italia), Berlin, Heidelberg (Alemania) ; Año: 2005 vol. 47 p. 563 - 570

1434-6028

The irreversible growth of magnetic films is studied in three-dimensional confined geometries of size L x L x M, where M >> L is the growing direction. Competing surface magnetic fields, applied to opposite corners of the growing system, lead to the observation of a localization-delocalization (weakly rounded) transition of the interface between domains of up and down spins on the planes transverse to the growing direction. This effective transition is the precursor of a true far-from-equilibrium corner wetting transition that takes place in the thermodynamic limit. The phenomenon is characterized quantitatively by drawing a magnetic field-temperature phase diagram, firstly for a confined sample of finite size, and then by extrapolating results, obtained with samples of different size, to the thermodynamic limit. The results of this work are a nonequilibrium realization of analogous phenomena recently investigated in equilibrium systems, such as corner wetting transitions in the Ising model.