Roughening of an Antiphase Boundary near a Bulk First Order Transition

ROUGHENING OF AN ANTIPHASE BOUNDARY NEAR A BULK FIRST ORDER TRANSITION 

An ordering phase transition is characterized by a loss of symmetry the ordered phase has less symmetry than the disordered one. Hence, an ordering process leads to the coexistence of different domains of the same ordered phase. An interface forms whenever two such domains contact. The thermodynamic behavior of this interface is governed by different forces. The presence of the underlying lattice and the stability of the ordered domains tend to localize the interface and to reduce its width. On the other hand, thermal fluctuations favor an interfacial wandering and an increase of the interface width. The result of this competition depends strongly on the order of the bulk phase transition. 

When the bulk transition is of first order, the above mentioned arguments based on dimensionality do not apply and the would be roughening transition temperature T j may be larger than the bulk transition temperature T, in which case there is simply no roughening transition. The situation is further complicated by the wetting phenomena. When we approach T from below, the disordered phase becomes metastable and may wet the interface a large layer of disordered phase develops in between the two ordered domains. 

The aim of the present study is precisely to investigate the thermodynamical properties of an interface when the bulk transition is of first order. We will consider the case of a binary alloy on the fee lattice which orders according to the LI2 (CuaAu type) structure. 

The thermodynamical properties of the APB will be investigated through the behavior of some local order parameter definec for each fee cube having co-ordinates x,y,z = R in a given MonteCarlo (MC) configuration C as  

---