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arXiv · 1505.02145

Critical Casimir Force between Inhomogeneous Boundaries

Jerome Dubail·Raoul Santachiara·Thorsten Emig
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Abstract

To study the critical Casimir force between chemically structured boundaries immersed in a binary mixture at its demixing transition, we consider a strip of Ising spins subject to alternating fixed spin boundary conditions. The system exhibits a boundary induced phase transition as function of the relative amount of up and down boundary spins. This transition is associated with a sign change of the asymptotic force and a diverging correlation length that sets the scale for the crossover between different universal force amplitudes. Using conformal field theory and a mapping to Majorana fermions, we obtain the universal scaling function of this crossover, and the force at short distances.

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Jerome Dubail, Raoul Santachiara, Thorsten Emig. 2015-05-08. Critical Casimir Force between Inhomogeneous Boundaries. https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075%2F112%2F66004

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