TY - JOUR
T1 - Ordered metastable states in the Potts model and their connection with the superheated solid state
AU - Moreno, Felipe
AU - Davis, Sergio
AU - Loyola, Claudia
AU - Peralta, Joaquín
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by FONDECYT grant 1140514 and FONDECYT Iniciación grant 11150279 . CL also acknowledges support from Proyecto Inserción PAI-79140025 and UNAB DI-1350-16/R . JP also acknowledges partial support from FONDECYT Iniciación 11130501 and UNAB DI-15-17/RG . This research was supported by the supercomputing infrastructures of the NLHPC ( ECM-02 ), and FENIX of the Materials Science Group at UNAB Physics Department ( http://www.matbio.cl/fenix ).
PY - 2018/11/1
Y1 - 2018/11/1
N2 - The superheating effect, in which a solid is heated well above its melting temperature and remains in an ordered, metastable phase, is a well-known phenomenon in materials science. Superheating can be observed experimentally under carefully controlled conditions, and more routinely in atomistic computer simulations. In the context of simulations of superheating, the so-called Z-method is a recently developed technique which allows a precise characterization of the metastable solid state and the melting temperature. However, metastable states are also present in other first-order phase transitions such as the order–disorder transition in spin systems. In spite of all the available work on the behavior of superheated solids, there have been few attempts to characterize the metastable ordered phase in contexts other than melting. In this work we study the ordered metastable state in a two-dimensional Potts lattice in the microcanonical ensemble under the conditions for first-order transitions. We connect our results with the melting transition in solids, and in particular with the empirical findings of the Z-method. In contrast with the sharp, discontinuous slope of the isochoric curve observed in the melting of solids, an S-shape curve is observed for T(E) in the case of spins. We discuss the implications of our results to extend the Z-method and its applicability for general first-order phase transitions.
AB - The superheating effect, in which a solid is heated well above its melting temperature and remains in an ordered, metastable phase, is a well-known phenomenon in materials science. Superheating can be observed experimentally under carefully controlled conditions, and more routinely in atomistic computer simulations. In the context of simulations of superheating, the so-called Z-method is a recently developed technique which allows a precise characterization of the metastable solid state and the melting temperature. However, metastable states are also present in other first-order phase transitions such as the order–disorder transition in spin systems. In spite of all the available work on the behavior of superheated solids, there have been few attempts to characterize the metastable ordered phase in contexts other than melting. In this work we study the ordered metastable state in a two-dimensional Potts lattice in the microcanonical ensemble under the conditions for first-order transitions. We connect our results with the melting transition in solids, and in particular with the empirical findings of the Z-method. In contrast with the sharp, discontinuous slope of the isochoric curve observed in the melting of solids, an S-shape curve is observed for T(E) in the case of spins. We discuss the implications of our results to extend the Z-method and its applicability for general first-order phase transitions.
KW - Monte Carlo simulation
KW - Phase transition
KW - Potts model
KW - Spin system
KW - Superheating
KW - Z-method
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85048718830&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.physa.2018.06.006
DO - 10.1016/j.physa.2018.06.006
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85048718830
SN - 0378-4371
VL - 509
SP - 361
EP - 368
JO - Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
JF - Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
ER -