Abstract:
We consider interfacial phenomena accompanying bulk quantum phase transitions in presence of surface fields. We argue that the surface contribution to the system free energy involves a singularity characteristic of an interfacial phase transition, occurring below the bulk transition temperature Tc. Relying on a phenomenological effective interfacial model we compute the interfacial phase diagram and extract the values of the exponents describing the leading interfacial singularities in spatial dimensionality d ≥ 3.