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Casimir Contribution to the Interfacial Hamiltonian for 3D Wetting

Alessio Squarcini, José M. Romero-Enrique, and Andrew O. Parry
Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 195701 – Published 13 May 2022
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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.

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  • Received 10 February 2022
  • Revised 16 March 2022
  • Accepted 19 April 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.195701

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.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Statistical Physics & Thermodynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Alessio Squarcini

  • Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Heisenbergstrasse 3, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany; IV. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany; and Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstraße 21A, A-6020, Innsbruck, Austria

José M. Romero-Enrique

  • Departamento de Física Atómica, Molecular y Nuclear, Área de Física Teórica, Universidad de Sevilla, Avenida de Reina Mercedes s/n, 41012 Seville, Spain

Andrew O. Parry

  • Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom

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Vol. 128, Iss. 19 — 13 May 2022

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