Fawaz Hrahsheh

Disorder promotes ferromagnetism: rounding of the quantum phase transition in Sr(1-x)Ca(x)RuO3.

The subtle interplay of randomness and quantum fluctuations at low temperatures gives rise to a plethora of unconventional phenomena in systems ranging from quantum magnets and correlated electron materials to ultracold atomic gases. Particularly strong disorder effects have been predicted to occur at zero-temperature quantum phase transitions. Here, we demonstrate that the composition-driven ferromagnetic-to-paramagnetic quantum phase transition in Sr(1-x)Ca(x)RuO3 is completely destroyed by the disorder introduced via the different ionic radii of the randomly distributed Sr and Ca ions. Using a magneto-optical technique, we map the magnetic phase diagram in the composition-temperature space. We find that the ferromagnetic phase is significantly extended by the disorder and develops a pronounced tail over a broad range of the composition x. These findings are explained by a microscopic model of smeared quantum phase transitions in itinerant magnets. Moreover, our theoretical study implies that correlated disorder is even more powerful in promoting ferromagnetism than random disorder.

Fluctuating Structure of Aqueous Organic Nanodroplets

Supercooled and nano-confined water occurs frequently as nanometer-sized aqueousorganic aerosol droplets that are ubiquitous in the atmosphere and in many industrial processes. Nanodroplet structure is important because it influences droplet growth and evaporation rates, heterogeneous reaction rates, and radiative properties. We used classical molecular dynamic simulations to study the structure of binary water-nonane and ternary water-butanol-nonane nanodroplets for several temperatures and droplet sizes. We found that nonspherical, phase-separated Russian Doll (RD) structures occur for water/nonane nanodroplets at all temperatures studied, 220K-300K. The RD structure consists of a nearly spherical water droplet partially wetted by a convex lens of nonane. We then studied the effects of butanol on the wetting of the water/butanol core-shell droplet by the nonane lens. At low concentrations, butanol acts as a surfactant to significantly enhance the wetability of the water droplet by nonane. At 250 K, with...

Rounding of a first-order quantum phase transition to a strong-coupling critical point

We investigate the effects of quenched disorder on first-order quantum phase transitions on the example of the

Composition-tuned smeared phase transitions

N

Nucleation Rates of Methanol Using the SAFT-0 Equation of State†

-color quantum Ashkin-Teller model. By means of a strong-disorder renormalization group, we demonstrate that quenched disorder rounds the first-order quantum phase transition to a continuous one for both weak and strong coupling between the colors. In the strong-coupling case, we find a distinct type of infinite-randomness critical point characterized by additional internal degrees of freedom. We investigate its critical properties in detail and find stronger thermodynamic singularities than in the random transverse field Ising chain. We also discuss the implications for higher spatial dimensions as well as unusual aspects of our renormalization-group scheme.

Strong-randomness phenomena in quantum Ashkin–Teller models

Phase transitions in random systems are smeared if individual spatial regions can order independently of the bulk system. In this paper, we study such smeared phase transitions (both classical and quantum) in substitutional alloys A

Strong-randomness infinite-coupling phase in a random quantum spin chain

_{1-x}

Disorder correlations at smeared phase transitions

B

Modification of smeared phase transitions by spatial disorder correlations

_x

Infinite-randomness criticality in a randomly layered Heisenberg magnet

that can be tuned from an ordered phase at composition