Self-organizing stripe patterns in two-dimensional frustrated systems with competing interactions

Abstract

The formation of self-organizing stripe structures in a two-dimensional frustrated system with competing short-range attractive and long-range Coulomb repulsive interactions is investigated by continuous time Monte Carlo simulation technique. We find that intermediate between the frustrated meandering striped phase at low temperatures and the disordered phase at high temperatures is a highly oriented stripe phase where frustrationinduced topological defects are effectively alleviated. The stability and the orientational ordering of stripe structures are mainly controlled by the temperature T, while the stripe thickness is determined by the strength of long-range repulsions g. A metastable branching stripe phase may appear between two ordered striped phases which are different in the width of the stripes. Furthermore, we obtain a complete T-g phase diagram describing the striped phase transitions. Our results clearly indicate a possibility for the production of highly ordered and defect-free nanometer-scale materials with different sizes by tuning the temperature and the relative repulsion strengths, and provide an interesting and universal picture to account for striking and substantial physics revealed in the stripe patterns of soft materials.

Direct Visualization of Spatial Inhomogeneity of Spin Stripes Order in La1.72Sr0.28NiO4

“…Thus, we can assume the observed behavior to be a general characteristic for SDW-stripes order. This behavior resembles what has been predicted for incommensurate cuprate stripes to occur at low temperatures, when a freezing to the lattice potential disturbs the long-range order [36][37][38].…”

“…Finally, we have reported new information on the quantum complex scenario near criticality in nickelates which opens new venues to applications and developments of new magnetic and electronic devices. In fact, in the proximity of a topological Lifshitz transition it is possible to control novel macroscopic functionalities by a weak external stimulus such as stress [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][71][72][73][74][75], current density [64,65] or photon illumination dose [5,[76][77][78][79].…”

Modulation of Surface Charge Transfer through Competing Long-Range Repulsive versus Short-Range Attractive Interactions

“…Such universal patterns arise from the modulation of phases, which are stabilized by competing interactions and are characterized by periodic spatial distributions. The modulation periods display a dependence on external parameters such as temperature, magnetic field, coverage, and so forth. − …”