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Register a new userCritical Casimir Effect in superfluid wetting films
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Recent experimental data for the complete wetting behavior of pure 4He and of 3He-4He mixtures exposed to solid substrates show that there is a change of the corresponding film thicknesses L upon approaching thermodynamically the lambda-transition and the tricritical end point, respectively, which can be attributed to critical Casimir forces f_C. We calculate the scaling functions vartheta of f_C within models representing the corresponding universality classes. For the mixtures our analysis provides an understanding of the rich behavior of vartheta deduced from the experimental data and predicts the crossover behavior between the tricritical point and the lambda-transition of pure 4He which are connected by a line of critical points. The formation of a soft-mode phase within the wetting films gives rise to a pronounced maximum of f_C below the tricritical point as observed experimentally. Near the tricritical point we find logarithmic corrections ~L^(-3)(ln L)^(1/2) for the leading behavior of vartheta dominating the contributions from the background dispersion forces.
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The profile of a critical hole in an undercooled wetting layer is determined by the saddle-point equation of a standard interface Hamiltonian supported by convenient boundary conditions. It is shown that this saddle-point equation can be mapped onto an autonomous dynamical system in a three-dimensional phase space. The corresponding flux has a polynomial form and in general displays four fixed points, each with different stability properties. On the basis of this picture we derive the thermodynamic behaviour of critical holes in three different nucleation regimes of the phase diagram.
The Casimir effect in quantum electrodynamics (QED) is perhaps the best-known example of fluctuation-induced long-ranged force acting on objects (conducting plates) immersed in a fluctuating medium (quantum electromagnetic field in vacuum). A similar effect emerges in statistical physics, where the force acting, e.g., on colloidal particles immersed in a binary liquid mixture is affected by the classical thermal fluctuations occurring in the surrounding medium. The resulting Casimir-like force acquires universal features upon approaching a critical point of the medium and becomes long-ranged at criticality. In turn, this universality allows one to investigate theoretically the temperature dependence of the force via representative models and to stringently test the corresponding predictions in experiments. In contrast to QED, the Casimir force resulting from critical fluctuations can be easily tuned with respect to strength and sign by surface treatments and temperature control. We present some recent advances in the theoretical study of the universal properties of the critical Casimir force arising in thin films. The corresponding predictions compare very well with the experimental results obtained for wetting layers of various fluids. We discuss how the Casimir force between a colloidal particle and a planar wall immersed in a binary liquid mixture has been measured with femto-Newton accuracy, comparing these experimental results with the corresponding theoretical predictions.
Monte Carlo simulations based on an integration scheme for free energy differences is used to compute critical Casimir forces for three-dimensional Ising films with various boundary fields. We study the scaling behavior of the critical Casimir force, including the scaling variable related to the boundary fields. Finite size corrections to scaling are taken into account. We pay special attention to that range of surface field strengths within which the force changes from repulsive to attractive upon increasing the temperature. Our data are compared with other results available in the literature.
At variance with the authors statement [L. P{a}lov{a}, P. Chandra and P. Coleman, Phys. Rev. B 79, 075101 (2009)], we show that the behavior of the universal scaling amplitude of the gap function in the phonon dispersion relation as a function of the dimensionality $d$, obtained within a self--consistent one--loop approach, is consistent with some previous analytical results obtained in the framework of the $epsilon$--expansion in conjunction with the field theoretic renormalization group method [S. Sachdev, Phys. Rev. B 55, 142 (1997)] and the exact calculations corresponding to the spherical limit i.e. infinite number $N$ of the components of the order parameter [H. Chamati. and N. S. Tonchev, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 33, 873 (2000)]. Furthermore we determine numerically the behavior of the temporal Casimir amplitude as a function of the dimensionality $d$ between the lower and upper critical dimension and found a maximum at $d=2.9144$. This is confirmed via an expansion near the upper dimension $d=3$.
We present an analytical solution of the Ginzburgs $Psi$-theory for the behavior of the Casimir force in a film of $^4$He in equilibrium with its vapor near the superfluid transition point, and we revisit the corresponding experiments in light of our findings. We find reasonably good agreement between the $Psi$-theory predictions and the experimental data. Our calculated force is attractive, and the largest absolute value of the scaling function is $1.848$, while experiment yields $1.30$. The position of the extremum is predicted to be at $x=(L/xi_0)(T/T_lambda-1)^{1/ u}=pi$, while experiment is consistent with $x=3.8$. Here $L$ is the thickness of the film, $T_lambda$ is the bulk critical temperature and $xi_0$ is the correlation length amplitude of the system for $T>T_lambda$.
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