Issue Eur. Phys. J. B Volume 42, Number 1, November I 2004 Page(s) 85 - 94 Section Solid and Condensed State Physics DOI 10.1140/epjb/e2004-00359-6 Published online 26 November 2004

Eur. Phys. J. B 42, 85-94 (2004)
DOI: 10.1140/epjb/e2004-00359-6

Quasicrystalline order in binary dipolar systems

F. Scheffler¹, P. Maass², J. Roth³ and H. Stark<sup>1

1</sup>  Fachbereich Physik, Universität Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany
²  Institut für Physik, Technische Universität Ilmenau, 98684 Ilmenau, Germany
³  Institut für Theoretische und Angewandte Physik, Universität Stuttgart, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany

Philipp.Maass@tu-ilmenau.de

(Received 28 June 2004 / Received in final form 15 September 2004 / Published online 26 November 2004 )

Abstract
Motivated by recent experimental findings, we investigate the possible occurrence and characteristics of quasicrystalline order in two-dimensional mixtures of point dipoles with two sorts of dipole moments. Despite the fact that the dipolar interaction potential does not exhibit an intrinsic length scale and cannot be tuned a priori to support the formation of quasicrystalline order, we find that configurations with long-range quasicrystallinity yield minima in the potential energy surface of the many particle system. These configurations emanate from an ideal or perturbed ideal decoration of a binary tiling by steepest descent relaxation. Ground state energy calculations of alternative ordered states and parallel tempering Monte-Carlo simulations reveal that the quasicrystalline configurations do not correspond to a thermodynamically stable state. On the other hand, steepest descent relaxations and conventional Monte-Carlo simulations suggest that they are rather robust against fluctuations. Local quasicrystalline order in the disordered equilibrium states can be strong.

PACS
61.44.Br - Quasicrystals.
75.50.Kj - Amorphous and quasicrystalline magnetic materials.
82.70.Dd - Colloids .

© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2004

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