Reentrant disordered phase in a system of repulsive rods on a Bethe-like lattice

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2013 Jul;88(1):012134. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.88.012134. Epub 2013 Jul 29.

Abstract

We solve exactly a model of monodispersed rigid rods of length k with repulsive interactions on the random locally tree-like layered lattice. For k≥4 we show that with increasing density, the system undergoes two phase transitions: first, from a low-density disordered phase to an intermediate density nematic phase and, second, from the nematic phase to a high-density reentrant disordered phase. When the coordination number is four, both phase transitions are continuous and in the mean field Ising universality class. For an even coordination number larger than four, the first transition is discontinuous, while the nature of the second transition depends on the rod length k and the interaction parameters.