Models with short and long-range interactions: phase diagram and reentrant phase

Thierry Dauxois, Pierre de Buyl, Leonardo Lori, Stefano Ruffo

Published 2010-04-09, updated 2010-05-25Version 2

We study the phase diagram of two different Hamiltonians with competiting local, nearest-neighbour, and mean-field couplings. The first example corresponds to the HMF Hamiltonian with an additional short-range interaction. The second example is a reduced Hamiltonian for dipolar layered spin structures, with a new feature with respect to the first example, the presence of anisotropies. The two examples are solved in both the canonical and the microcanonical ensemble using a combination of the min-max method with the transfer operator method. The phase diagrams present typical features of systems with long-range interactions: ensemble inequivalence, negative specific heat and temperature jumps. Moreover, in a given range of parameters, we report the signature of phase reentrance. This can also be interpreted as the presence of azeotropy with the creation of two first order phase transitions with ensemble inequivalence, as one parameter is varied continuously.