Entropy of fully packed hard rigid rods on d-dimensional hypercubic lattices.

Abstract

We determine the asymptotic behavior of the entropy of full coverings of a L×M square lattice by rods of size k×1 and 1×k, in the limit of large k. We show that full coverage is possible only if at least one of L and M is a multiple of k, and that all allowed configurations can be reached from a standard configuration of all rods being parallel, using only basic flip moves that replace a k×k square of parallel horizontal rods by vertical rods, and vice versa. In the limit of large k, we show that the entropy per site S_{2}(k) tends to Ak^{-2}lnk, with A=1. We conjecture, based on a perturbative series expansion, that this large-k behavior of entropy per site is superuniversal and continues to hold on all d-dimensional hypercubic lattices, with d≥2.