Multicriticality of the (2+1)-dimensional gonihedric model: A realization of the (d,m)=(3,2) Lifshitz point

Abstract

Multicriticality of the gonihedric model in 2+1 dimensions is investigated numerically. The gonihedric model is a fully frustrated Ising magnet with the finely tuned plaquette-type (four-body and plaquette-diagonal) interactions, which cancel out the domain-wall surface tension. Because the quantum-mechanical fluctuation along the imaginary-time direction is simply ferromagnetic, the criticality of the (2+1)-dimensional gonihedric model should be an anisotropic one; that is, the respective critical indices of real-space (\perp) and imaginary-time (\parallel) sectors do not coincide. Extending the parameter space to control the domain-wall surface tension, we analyze the criticality in terms of the crossover (multicritical) scaling theory. By means of the numerical diagonalization for the clusters with N\le 28 spins, we obtained the correlation-length critical indices (\nu_\perp,\nu_\parallel)=(0.45(10),1.04(27)), and the crossover exponent \phi=0.7(2). Our results are comparable to (\nu_{\perp},\nu_{\parallel})=(0.482,1.230), and \phi=0.688 obtained by Diehl and Shpot for the (d,m)=(3,2) Lifshitz point with the \epsilon-expansion method up to O(\epsilon^2).