Binary lattice-gases of particles with soft exclusion: exact phase diagrams for tree-like lattices

Abstract

We study equilibrium properties of binary lattice-gases comprising A and B particles, which undergo continuous exchanges with their respective reservoirs, maintained at chemical potentials μ A = μ B = μ. The particles interact via on-site hard-core exclusion and also between the nearest-neighbours: there are a soft repulsion between AB pairs and also interactions of arbitrary strength J, positive or negative, for AA and BB pairs. For tree-like Bethe and Husimi lattices we determine the full phase diagram of such a ternary mixture of particles and voids. We show that for J being above a lattice-dependent threshold value, the critical behaviour is similar: the system undergoes a transition at μ = μ c from a phase with equal mean densities of species into a phase with a spontaneously broken symmetry, in which the mean densities are no longer equal. Depending on the value of J, this transition can be either continuous or of the first order. For sufficiently large negative J, the behaviour on the two lattices becomes markedly different: on the Bethe lattice there exist two separate phases with different kinds of structural order, which are absent on the Husimi lattice, due to stronger frustration effects.