{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/emergent-potts-order-in-a-coupled-hexatic","title":"Emergent Potts Order in a Coupled Hexatic-Nematic XY model","arxiv_id":"2103.01878","date":"2021-03-02","proceeding":null,"authors":["Victor Drouin-Touchette","Peter P. Orth","Piers Coleman","Premala Chandra","Tom C. Lubensky"],"abstract":"Addressing the nature of an unexpected smectic-A' phase in liquid crystal 54COOBC films, we perform large scale Monte Carlo simulations of a coupled hexatic-nematic XY model. The resulting finite-temperature phase diagram reveals a small region with composite Potts $\\mathbb{Z}_3$ order above the vortex binding transition; this phase is characterized by relative hexatic-nematic ordering though both variables are disordered. The system develops algebraic hexatic and nematic order only at a lower temperature. This multi-step melting scenario agrees well with the experimental observations of a sharp specific heat anomaly that emerges above the onset of hexatic positional order. We therefore propose that the smectic-A' phase is characterized by composite Potts order and bound-states of fractional vortices.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.01878v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.01878v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"emergent-potts-order-in-a-coupled-hexatic","repo_url":"https://github.com/Orth-Research/Potts-XY","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}