No Arabic abstract
We present general arguments and construct a stress tensor operator for finite lattice spin models. The average value of this operator gives the Casimir force of the system close to the bulk critical temperature $T_c$. We verify our arguments via exact results for the force in the two-dimensional Ising model, $d$-dimensional Gaussian and mean spherical model with $2<d<4$. On the basis of these exact results and by Monte Carlo simulations for three-dimensional Ising, XY and Heisenberg models we demonstrate that the standard deviation of the Casimir force $F_C$ in a slab geometry confining a critical substance in-between is $k_b T D(T)(A/a^{d-1})^{1/2}$, where $A$ is the surface area of the plates, $a$ is the lattice spacing and $D(T)$ is a slowly varying nonuniversal function of the temperature $T$. The numerical calculations demonstrate that at the critical temperature $T_c$ the force possesses a Gaussian distribution centered at the mean value of the force $<F_C>=k_b T_c (d-1)Delta/(L/a)^{d}$, where $L$ is the distance between the plates and $Delta$ is the (universal) Casimir amplitude.
The confinement of critical fluctuations in soft media induces critical Casimir forces acting on the confining surfaces. The temperature and geometry dependences of such forces are characterized by universal scaling functions. A novel approach is presented to determine them for films via Monte Carlo simulations of lattice models. The method is based on an integration scheme of free energy differences. Our results for the Ising and the XY universality class compare favourably with corresponding experimental results for wetting layers of classical binary liquid mixtures and of 4He, respectively.
The critical Casimir force (CCF) arises from confining fluctuations in a critical fluid and thus it is a fluctuating quantity itself. While the mean CCF is universal, its (static) variance has previously been found to depend on the microscopic details of the system which effectively set a large-momentum cutoff in the underlying field theory, rendering it potentially large. This raises the question how the properties of the force variance are reflected in experimentally observable quantities, such as the thickness of a wetting film or the position of a suspended colloidal particle. Here, based on a rigorous definition of the instantaneous force, we analyze static and dynamic correlations of the CCF for a conserved fluid in film geometry for various boundary conditions within the Gaussian approximation. We find that the dynamic correlation function of the CCF is independent of the momentum cutoff and decays algebraically in time. Within the Gaussian approximation, the associated exponent depends only on the dynamic universality class but not on the boundary conditions. We furthermore consider a fluid film, the thickness of which can fluctuate under the influence of the time-dependent CCF. The latter gives rise to an effective non-Markovian noise in the equation of motion of the film boundary and induces a distinct contribution to the position variance. Within the approximations used here, at short times, this contribution grows algebraically in time whereas, at long times, it saturates and contributes to the steady-state variance of the film thickness.
We present a systematic method to calculate the universal scaling functions for the critical Casimir force and the according potential of the two-dimensional Ising model with various boundary conditions. Therefore we start with the dimer representation of the corresponding partition function $Z$ on an $Ltimes M$ square lattice, wrapped around a torus with aspect ratio $rho=L/M$. By assuming periodic boundary conditions and translational invariance in at least one direction, we systematically reduce the problem to a $2times2$ transfer matrix representation. For the torus we first reproduce the results by Kaufman and then give a detailed calculation of the scaling functions. Afterwards we present the calculation for the cylinder with open boundary conditions. All scaling functions are given in form of combinations of infinite products and integrals. Our results reproduce the known scaling functions in the limit of thin films $rhoto 0$. Additionally, for the cylinder at criticality our results confirm the predictions from conformal field theory.
We propose a modification of the non-perturbative renormalization-group (NPRG) which applies to lattice models. Contrary to the usual NPRG approach where the initial condition of the RG flow is the mean-field solution, the lattice NPRG uses the (local) limit of decoupled sites as the (initial) reference system. In the long-distance limit, it is equivalent to the usual NPRG formulation and therefore yields identical results for the critical properties. We discuss both a lattice field theory defined on a $d$-dimensional hypercubic lattice and classical spin systems. The simplest approximation, the local potential approximation, is sufficient to obtain the critical temperature and the magnetization of the 3D Ising, XY and Heisenberg models to an accuracy of the order of one percent. We show how the local potential approximation can be improved to include a non-zero anomalous dimension $eta$ and discuss the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition of the 2D XY model on a square lattice.
Effective Casimir forces induced by thermal fluctuations in the vicinity of bulk critical points are studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations in three-dimensional systems for film geometries and within the experimentally relevant Ising and XY universality classes. Several surface universality classes of the confining surfaces are considered, some of which are relevant for recent experiments. A novel approach introduced previously EPL 80, 60009 (2007), based inter alia on an integration scheme of free energy differences, is utilized to compute the universal scaling functions of the critical Casimir forces in the critical range of temperatures above and below the bulk critical temperature. The resulting predictions are compared with corresponding experimental data for wetting films of fluids and with available theoretical results.