Critical behavior in rectangles with mixed boundaries.

Abstract

Density profiles are investigated arising in a critical Ising model in two dimensions which is confined to a rectangular domain with uniform or mixed boundary conditions and arbitrary aspect ratio. For the cases in which the two vertical sides of the rectangle have up-spin boundary conditions + and the two horizontal sides with either down-spin boundary conditions - or with free-spin boundary conditions f, exact results are presented for the density profiles of the energy and the order parameter which display a surprisingly rich behavior. The new results follow by means of conformal transformations from known results in the half plane with +-+-+ and +f+f+ boundary conditions. The corners with mixed boundary conditions lead to interesting behavior, even in the limit of a half-infinite strip. The behavior near these corners can be described by a "corner-operator-expansion," which is discussed in the second part of the paper. The analytic predictions agree very well with simulations, with no adjustable parameters.