Large-order behavior of a two-coupling-constant phi4 theory with cubic anisotropy

Phase diagram of a system of hard cubes on the cubic lattice

We study the phase diagram of a system of 2×2×2 hard cubes on a three-dimensional cubic lattice. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we show that the system exhibits four different phases as the density of cubes is increased: disordered, layered, sublattice ordered, and columnar ordered. In the layered phase, the system spontaneously breaks up into parallel slabs of size 2×L×L where only a very small fraction cubes do not lie wholly within a slab. Within each slab, the cubes are disordered; translation symmetry is thus broken along exactly one principal axis. In the solidlike sublattice-ordered phase, the hard cubes preferentially occupy one of eight sublattices of the cubic lattice, breaking translational symmetry along all three principal directions. In the columnar phase, the system spontaneously breaks up into weakly interacting parallel columns of size 2×2×L, where only a very small fraction cubes do not lie wholly within a column. Within each column, the system is disordered, and thus translational symmetry is broken only along two principal directions. Using finite-size scaling, we show that the disordered-layered phase transition is continuous, while the layered-sublattice and sublattice-columnar transitions are discontinuous. We construct a Landau theory written in terms of the layering and columnar order parameters which is able to describe the different phases that are observed in the simulations and the order of the transitions. Additionally, our results near the disordered-layered transition are consistent with the O(3) universality class perturbed by cubic anisotropy as predicted by the Landau theory.

Anisotropy of a cubic ferromagnet at criticality

Critical fluctuations change the effective anisotropy of cubic ferromagnet near the Curie point. If the crystal undergoes phase transition into orthorhombic phase and the initial anisotropy is not too strong, reduced anisotropy of nonlinear susceptibility acquires at T_{c} the universal value δ_{4}^{*}=2v^{*}/3(u^{*}+v^{*}) where u^{*} and v^{*} are coordinates of the cubic fixed point on the flow diagram of renormalization group equations. In the paper, the critical value of the reduced anisotropy is estimated within the pseudo-ε expansion approach. The six-loop pseudo-ε expansions for u^{*}, v^{*}, and δ_{4}^{*} are derived for the arbitrary spin dimensionality n. For cubic crystals (n=3) higher-order coefficients of the pseudo-ε expansions obtained turn out to be so small that use of simple Padé approximants yields reliable numerical results. Padé resummation of the pseudo-ε series for u^{*}, v^{*}, and δ_{4}^{*} leads to the estimate δ_{4}^{*}=0.079±0.006, indicating that detection of the anisotropic critical behavior of cubic ferromagnets in physical and computer experiments is certainly possible.