Devil's staircase for a nonconvex interaction

Abstract

We study ground-state orderings of particles in classical lattice-gas models of adsorption on crystal surfaces. In the considered models, the energy of adsorbed particles is a sum of two components, each one representing the energy of a one-dimensional lattice gas with two-body interactions in one of the two orthogonal lattice directions. This feature reduces the two-dimensional problem to a one-dimensional one. The interaction energy in each direction is repulsive and strictly convex only from distance 2 on, while its value at distance 1 can be positive or negative, but close to zero. We show that if the decay rate of the interactions is fast enough, then particles form 2-particle lattice-connected aggregates which are distributed in the same most homogeneous way as particles whose interaction is strictly convex everywhere. Moreover, despite the lack of convexity, the density of particles versus the chemical potential appears to be a fractal curve known as the complete devil's staircase.