Study of Damage Propagation at the Interface Localization-Delocalization Transition of the Confined Ising Model

TL;DR

This study investigates how damage propagates at the interface of a confined Ising model near the wetting transition, revealing that interfaces significantly enhance damage spreading and shift critical points.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the interface acts as a catalyst for damage spreading and shows how the wetting transition influences damage propagation critical points.

Findings

Damage spreading is enhanced by the interface presence.

Wetting transition shifts damage critical points.

Damage spreading critical points are within the non-wet phase.

Abstract

The propagation of damage in a confined magnetic Ising film, with short range competing magnetic fields ($h$) acting at opposite walls, is studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations. Due to the presence of the fields, the film undergoes a wetting transition at a well defined critical temperature $T_w(h)$. In fact, the competing fields causes the occurrence of an interface between magnetic domains of different orientation. For $T < T_w(h)$ ($T > T_w(h)$) such interface is bounded (unbounded) to the walls, while right at $T_w(h)$ the interface is essentially located at the center of the film. It is found that the spatio-temporal spreading of the damage becomes considerably enhanced by the presence of the interface, which act as a ''catalyst'' of the damage causing an enhancement of the total damaged area. The critical points for damage spreading are evaluated by extrapolation to the thermodynamic limit using a finite-size scaling approach. Furthermore, the wetting transition effectively shifts the location of the damage spreading critical points, as compared with the well known critical temperature of the order-disorder transition characteristic of the Ising model. Such a critical points are found to be placed within the non-wet phase.