Casimir interactions in Ising strips with boundary fields: exact results.

An exact statistical mechanical derivation is given of the critical Casimir forces for Ising strips with arbitrary surface fields applied to edges. Our results show that the strength as well as the sign of the force can be controlled by varying the temperature or the fields. An interpretation of the results is given in terms of a linked cluster expansion.

Interfaces in driven Ising models: shear enhances confinement.

We use a phase-separated driven two-dimensional Ising lattice gas to study fluid interfaces exposed to shear flow parallel to the interface. The interface is stabilized by two parallel walls with opposing surface fields, and a driving field parallel to the walls is applied which (i) either acts locally at the walls or (ii) varies linearly with distance across the strip. Using computer simulations with Kawasaki dynamics, we find that the system reaches a steady state in which the magnetization profile is the same as that in equilibrium, but with a rescaled length implying a reduction of the interfacial width.

Microscopic model for thin film spreading.

A microscopic, driven lattice gas model is proposed for the dynamics and spatiotemporal fluctuations of the precursor film observed in spreading experiments. Matter is transported both by holes and particles, and the distribution of each can be described by driven diffusion with a moving boundary. This picture leads to a stochastic partial differential equation for the shape of the boundary.