3D Short-Range Wetting and Nonlocality

Abstract

Analysis of a microscopic Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson model of 3D short-ranged wetting shows that correlation functions are characterized by two length scales, not one, as previously thought. This has a simple diagrammatic explanation using a nonlocal interfacial Hamiltonian and yields a thermodynamically consistent theory of wetting in keeping with exact sum rules. For critical wetting the second length serves to lower the cutoff in the spectrum of interfacial fluctuations determining the repulsion from the wall. We show how this corrects previous renormalization group predictions for fluctuation effects, based on local interfacial Hamiltonians. In particular, lowering the cutoff leads to a substantial reduction in the effective value of the wetting parameter and prevents the transition being driven first order. Quantitative comparison with Ising model simulation studies due to Binder, Landau, and co-workers is also made.