First Order Transition in Two Dimensional Coulomb Glass

TL;DR

This study investigates the phase transition in a two-dimensional Coulomb Glass model, revealing a first order transition at zero temperature characterized by a critical disorder and specific critical exponents.

Contribution

It provides the first evidence of a first order transition in 2D Coulomb Glass through Monte Carlo simulations and finite size scaling analysis.

Findings

Critical disorder Wc = 0.2413 identified

Discontinuous magnetization indicating first order transition

Three peak structure in staggered magnetization distribution

Abstract

We have studied the ground states of two dimensional lattice model of Coulomb Glass via Monte Carlo annealing. Our results show a possibility of existence of a critical disorder (Wc) below which the system is in the charge ordered phase and above it the system is in the disordered phase. We have used finite size scaling to calculate Wc = 0.2413, the critical exponent of magnetization {\beta} = 0 indicating discontinuity in magnetization and the critical exponent of correlation length {\nu} = 1.0. The distribution of staggered magnetization for different disorder strengths shows a three peak structure. We thus predict that two dimensional Coulomb Glass shows a first order transition at T=0.