Interplay of complete wetting, critical adsorption, and capillary condensation

Abstract

The excess adsorption Gamma in two-dimensional Ising strips (infinityxL), subject to identical boundary fields at both one-dimensional surfaces decaying in the orthogonal direction j as -h1j(-p), is studied for various values of p and along various thermodynamic paths below the bulk critical point by means of the density-matrix renormalization-group method. The crossover behavior between the complete-wetting and critical-adsorption regimes, occurring in semi-infinite systems, is strongly influenced by confinement effects. Along isotherms T=const the asymptotic power-law dependences on the external bulk field, which characterize these two regimes, are pre-empted by capillary condensation. Along the pseudo-first-order phase-coexistence line of the strips, which varies with temperature, we find a broad crossover regime in which both the thickness of the wetting film and Gamma increase as functions of the reduced temperature tau but do not follow any power law. Above the wetting temperature the order-parameter profiles are not slablike but exhibit wide interfacial variations and pronounced tails.