Abstract
We study the effects of topological (connectivity) disorder on phase transitions. We identify a broad class of random lattices whose disorder fluctuations decay much faster with increasing length scale than those of generic random systems, yielding a wandering exponent of ω = (d−1)/(2d) in d dimensions. The stability of clean critical points is thus governed by the criterion (d+1)ν > 2 rather than the usual Harris criterion dν > 2, making topological disorder less relevant than generic randomness. The Imry-Ma criterion is also modified, allowing first-order transitions to survive in all dimensions d > 1. These results explain a host of puzzling violations of the original criteria for equilibrium and nonequilibrium phase transitions on random lattices. We discuss applications, and we illustrate our theory by computer simulations of random Voronoi and other lattices.
Recommended Citation
H. Barghathi and T. Vojta, "Phase Transitions on Random Lattices: How Random Is Topological Disorder?," Physical Review Letters, vol. 113, no. 12, American Physical Society (APS), Sep 2014.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.120602
Department(s)
Physics
Research Center/Lab(s)
Center for High Performance Computing Research
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
0031-9007
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2014 American Physical Society (APS), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Sep 2014
